Austin Schofield '19 Recruiting Profile

Hello Coaches,

I am a sophomore in college and have 30 college credits and I have 4 years of college tennis eligibility still due to COVID-19. I am looking for a competitive team that has a full roster and is competing to win a National Championship. With that said I want to help lead the team to win a National Championship. During the summer I trained with an ATP ranked player Agustin Gascia from Argentina and is ranked 1,363 in ATP and is a 12.70 UTR player. 

I began playing tennis in middle school and have been playing tennis competitively since my freshman year of high school. I really enjoy the sport. Tennis is a sport that I love because you don't just play against an opponent but the ball also. So I try to focus on beating the ball and not the player. Prior to my love for tennis, I competed in archery tournaments including state and national. During my freshman year, I played high school tennis on the Junior Varsity team playing doubles. In my sophomore year, I only played tennis (Junior Varsity doubles) the last two weeks of the season due to recovery from surgery (see below). I worked on my game in the off-season and in my junior year, I played #3 Varsity singles. My goal is to play #1 Varsity singles my senior year and I am working towards that. I have been taking lessons from an ATP tennis pro(my father), playing USTA tournaments, and working on my UTR rating. Beyond high school, I want to play tennis on a competitive college team. I enjoy the competition and have a strong desire to win.

I have had two major challenges to face in my life. The first one is dyslexia which has made reading and spelling a challenge. I had seven years of specialized tutoring. I now attend an academically challenging college at The University of Saint Francis as a sophomore. I have taken 30 college credits without special accommodations for dyslexia and have an overall GPA of 3.4 on a 4-point scale. The second challenge is a condition called pectus excavatum which is corrected surgically. I had the Nuss bar procedure after my freshman year in high school to correct the shape of my rib cage. I was not able to play tennis most of my sophomore season due to my 4-month recovery time. I will have a much shorter recovery time when the bar is removed during my senior year of high school. I have come a long way in just a few years even with the time off for surgery. I have 1 year of the college tennis experience and it did not count for my total amount of 4 years of eligibility due to COVID-19.