TEN QUESTIONS WITH...

Last year, the team won one Mid-American Conference match, defeating Akron. This year, you’ve already won three, beating Ball State, Northern Illinois and Toledo. How exciting has it been to already be at a place where you have more conference wins than last year?
It’s definitely exciting. It has given us a lot of confidence. If there’s one thing we need to work on, it’s confidence, because we’ve already achieved great physical conditioning. The girls on the team don’t get tired when we play a match. It’s the other team that gets worn out.

We also have a lot of new players on the team this year. This team is really a lot different than last year and we have accepted that fact and go out and play. We haven’t gone on court and said, ‘Oh, this is Ball State. We used to lose to that team.’ We’ve gone out there and played now. What’s in the past is already gone.

As a freshman, you earned the team’s Most Valuable Player Award and you went 18-7 in singles and 18-8 in doubles as well as being named the Mid-American Conference Newcomer of the Year. Did you expect to find such success so quickly in the NCAA?
To be honest, I didn’t know what these awards meant or that they existed while playing the MAC matches. Just during the last week of the year, they told me there was a banquet and awards and that’s when I found out. That’s when I actually realized that I’d done something well. I was pretty happy about it. A lot of people got to know me and it was just nice.

You are joined on the women’s tennis team by women from three other countries (Singapore, Romania, Austria) as well as some who grew up just down the road from UB. What’s it like playing with such a diverse group?
To me, it’s really not something new. I’ve been playing ITF and WTA tournaments since I was about 12 so I’ve grown up in an international environment. I have played tournaments in maybe, every single country in Europe so I really know that people are different in different countries. It’s not something new, so I think I’m doing pretty well adjusting to everybody.

While in your home country of Bulgaria, you attained a Women’s Tennis Association ranking of 1,200. What were some of the tournaments you played in to earn that ranking?
I played several $10,000 and $25,000 tournaments, but it was a lot of work. In order to get into the major of the tournament and actually get WTA points, you have to win three or four matches to qualify. By the time you get to the major, you’re already so tired. With all the traveling and all the other expenses, it was just very hard to accomplish a ranking where you could earn money. That’s why I decided to come to college.

Who is your favorite tennis player to watch?
Unfortunately, my favorite tennis player doesn’t compete anymore, Martina Hingis. I love to watch her because she plays with such an ease on the court. She makes it seem effortless. She’s just so talented.

You grew up at a time when Bulgaria had to make the transition from under a communist regime to a political democracy. How much did those changes affect your life?
They affected my life significantly. My family went through phases where we had to make our own yogurt because we couldn’t buy it. It was not available. We didn’t have money, so you can just imagine how I could play tennis when I didn’t have money for food. We had no place to practice and we didn’t have any indoor courts. We didn’t have money for balls.

After we went through that period and the democracy came, it was a lot better, but that was a struggle, too. The money lost its value and even though we were very good tennis players- we played better than a lot of players from Western Europe- we were able to afford, let’s say, a total of 10 tournaments per year. Players from Western Europe were playing two or three tournaments every month, so they were catching up and getting a better ranking just because they played more and we couldn’t afford the tournaments.

You went to an English-intensive school, Eurointellect, in Bulgaria. What were some of the things that were taught at that school that helped you pick up English as a new language?
I didn’t pick English as a second language; I was forced to learn it. It was not my choice. Russian and English were the languages we had to study in high school. It’s not like in America, where if you like that, you take that class. I knew I had to learn English because I was hoping to one day study in another country. I knew I had to learn a language that I could talk to people from many different countries. My language is really not a big language. No one really talks Bulgarian anywhere.

What was the recruiting process like for you as you made your decision to come to college?
I injured my shoulder and I couldn’t play for a while. After that, I decided it was way too hard to come back to professional tennis so I looked online to see about universities in the US. I e-mailed a couple of coaches and sent a couple of videotapes of me playing and that’s how I contacted Buffalo. I met (head coach) Kathy Twist online and then she started to call me and became really interested in me. It happened really fast.

Now that you’ve lived in the United States for two years, what do you think are some of the biggest differences between life in Bulgaria and life in the US?
The biggest difference is that it’s a lot easier in America in terms of: you have everything. You have the court; you have the balls; you have the environment to study. You don’t have to think about anything else; you just have to do the work. When I was in Bulgaria, I would want to play tennis, but there wasn’t a court. It’s just all those side problems that you’d have that affected your life. Here, you’re just a flower in a pot, you just need to grow and do what you’re supposed to do and you’ll be OK. That’s one of the biggest differences.

What has been your favorite moment as a UB athlete?
Maybe the way people treat me when they find out that I’m a tennis player, an athlete. I think they respect me a lot more because they know how hard it is to become an athlete and also to be a student at the same time. When I say I’m an athlete, people automatically have this good feeling about me, so it’s so much easier to interact with people and make friends.

“The 10 Questions With…” feature is compiled by Joe Guistina.