November 2025
College Athletes on the Professional Stage
Over the summer, Toreros and the rest of the world watched as now-senior Oliver Tarvet played on the biggest stage in tennis. Just down the road from his hometown, Tarvet went head-to-head with then second-ranked tennis player in the world, Carlos Alcaraz, in Wimbledon. With his USD coaches beside him, Tarvet played with all his heart and showed the world that student-athletes can be a part of the big leagues – while also making academics a priority. In fact, at Wimbledon this year, the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) shared that it was a “record-setting year” with 35 players, with ties to college tennis, playing in the game.
Tarvet wasn’t the only Torero student-athlete competing on the world stage. Men's Rowing raced, for the first time in program history, in one of the world's most prestigious regattas outside the Olympics, the Henley Royal Regatta. And, women’s volleyball competed in the World University Games this past summer, representing USD as the country’s only women’s volleyball team.
Photo by Thomas Christensen
On USD’s podcast “At the Edge of it All,” Tarvet shared that it was the structure of collegiate athletics that helped him become a better athlete, along with having the camaraderie from a team and coaches to have his back along the way. Something that young professional athletes don’t always have.
This level of structure is something student-athletes use to navigate everything from course loads, practices to the evolving Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) world. Yet despite these hurdles, student-athletes continue to excel on and off their respective field or court. For example, just last year, USD Athletics earned a 95 percent graduation success rate, five percent higher than the NCAA’s national Division I average.
To help our athletes thrive, we’re continuously investing in them to make sure they have all the tools they need, not only in the classroom but also to help them practice their respective sports effectively. The new Palomar Health Student Wellness Center now houses NCAA Division 1 basketball practice facilities for basketball men's and women's teams. The Purcell Family Championship Golf Practice Facility, which opened in August 2023, was designed by golfing icon Phil Mickelson to give student golfers a state-of-the-art course. And just this past spring, our Torero softball program opened the Reggie Smith Softball Complex to help students practice their craft.
I believe in the power of athletics to help our student-athletes build fundamental skills like time management, leadership, teamwork and how to challenge themselves in new ways while overcoming adversity– all tools needed in their post-graduation pursuits. Investing more across all collegiate sports uplifts and supports the needs of all our outstanding student athletes. The ever growing influence of the Power Four football conferences negatively impacts schools and student athletes, and is something I argued in a recent Op-Ed I wrote for The New York Times. I make this point because I hope that in an ever-changing college athletics space with NIL, trading portals and new governance structures in the NCAA, that we can continue to remember the value of all of our university sports programs. Here at USD, we want athletes to thrive not only on the playing field, but also in the classroom and in their service to the community. And, whether our students have dreams of being professional athletes or the next NASA astronaut, I know that with the Torero community behind them, they’ll have lifelong cheerleaders rooting for them along the way.