By Aimee Brandon Posted February 18, 2015
Since she could walk Lowry student, Olivia Silva has been attending sports camps and participating in any and all athletics available.
Both of Silva’s parents had very successful college sports careers and wish for the same for their daughter. Her father played basketball for CSI and her mom cheered for the team. All through the summers of her youth and elementary and middle school Silva has participated in anything and everything sports-related. Going into high school Silva, with the help of her parents, narrowed her focus down to three sports: volleyball, hockey, and tennis. More recently, as she goes into her junior year of high school, she has decided to focus on tennis. She is on a traveling tennis team in Reno. Every Friday night she will travel to Reno and stay with family there. Practice starts at 6 a.m. Saturday morning and continues to 3 p.m. that afternoon with a few hour breaks throughout the day. Then all day Sunday she competes in matches against people from the Northern Nevada area.
Silva has recently realized that her parents have spent a very large sum of money on her sports.
“My parents have put thousands of dollars into my tennis career. I don’t really like tennis at all, I’d rather spend all that money on something more important like clothes, or college. But I love my parents, so I’m doing it,” said Silva.
Silva may not love the sport now but looking back at how she got started with tennis she sees it was once the love of her life.
“I got started with tennis when I was very young. My aunt and uncle would take me over to the tennis court by the hospital on Sundays and let me watch and even play a little. As I got older they saw I had a real natural ability,” said Silva.
Silva’s parents have high hopes as they anticipate her tennis career and hope to see her on national television someday.
“We are very optimistic about Silva’s tennis future. We have put so much into it, our biggest hope is that she can get a college scholarship and maybe even move onto tournaments with the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) and who knows maybe even the Olympics,” said Silva’s father.
Silva is quite doubtful about her tennis career because she thinks it won’t be respected in Winnemucca, but just wait until she brings home the gold for Team USA.
