DENNIS SILVA II | STAFF WRITER
Kassandra Rocha was set to go to Kansas.
The multi-sport Roma senior standout had been offered to go play volleyball at McPherson College, and Rocha had accepted, willing to go more than 900 miles from home to continue her athletic career.
That is, until last Wednesday, when Rocha received a call from University of Texas Rio Grande Valley track and field coach Xavier Richardson, who offered Rocha a full athletic scholarship to the NCAA Division I program.
“I quickly changed my mind,” Rocha said. “It’s close by, it’s home and they’re paying for everything. I have no idea what brought them on, I just got the call and they asked if I wanted to join. I was pretty excited.”
Rocha is the third student-athlete from Roma to sign with a NCAA DI program. She will compete in the triple jump.
“Roma is never put out there, and it’s disappointing to me,” Rocha said. “There are a lot of great athletes at Roma. Going to UTRGV, I’m hoping to put Roma’s name out there.”
Rocha was a star for the Gladiators, excelling in volleyball, basketball, soccer — all of which she helped lead to the area round of the playoffs — and track and field. She capped her high school career by qualifying for the UIL Class 5A state meet in the triple jump.
Rocha competed in five events for coach Omar Mireles’ girls program: the 4×100, 4×200 and 4×400 relays, and the triple and long jumps.
“I was always apologizing to her because she was running a lot of events for us,” Mireles said. “But that’s the type of athlete she is. You want to put her everywhere.
“For a person that has a lot of talent, she strives for more and more. She doesn’t rely on it. She’s always doing more to complement her talent.”
Rocha thrived at Roma despite an inauspicious start. After dominating her events in middle school, Rocha said “she wasn’t great” in beginning as a Gladiator.
“It was just different competition, and she wasn’t used to losing,” Mireles said. “What she came to understand is everything will have its time and place. She became a student of the sport.
“When she started, she just wanted to go out there and run and jump. But then she started studying the sport and now she always has a game plan when she competes.”
Rocha will be going through a similar situation at UTRGV. Once again, the competition will be faster and stronger than what she’s used to.
But she’s also ready for it.
“Coming from middle school as one of the best, and then you come and see these girls that are faster, stronger, it was shocking and scary,” Rocha said. “But they taught me a lot. They just pushed me harder. It was different. Now I’m prepared for the same going to college, but now I’ll be able to specialize on this one event in this one sport. I’ll be able to learn quicker.”
Being able to put all her time and energy into one sport, let alone one event, is a relief for Rocha, who found herself competing from August through May, and sometimes in two sports at once, during high school.
Being involved in many sports was her mother Lorraine’s idea to keep her kids off the streets.
“From a very early age, my husband and I decided that academics, sports, music … anything to keep them occupied was what we were going for,” Lorraine said. “My husband and I came from humble beginnings, so we never had the opportunity to be involved with extracurricular activities. Our kids are able to by sacrifices or donations from family, and it was our goal to keep them involved in sports.
“The important thing was, to compete in extracurricular activities, you have to pass. You have to have good grades.”
Rocha will major in geology and minor in math at UTRGV. Mireles said the Vaqueros are getting a “fighter,” which is what he called Rocha as the second leg of his relay teams.
The first runner got the lead, Rocha fought to keep it, the third extended it and the anchor finished it off.
“Kassy is a coach’s dream,” Mireles said. “I know she was always going to come through, regardless of the situation.”