Doctor Costa Has No Regrets

At 17 years old, Catarina COSTA of Portugal was a first year junior athlete, and at home when athletes choose to go to university, coaches assume they’re going to leave the sport to focus on their academics, but for Catarina, this wasn’t the case.

One of the national coaches asked me if I was leaving, I explained no and that I thought I could do both, he looked at me like ‘maybe she doesn’t know how hard this will be’ but I was really confident. First year was really a shock, but I also did the whole year without a split for sport, but I also took fifth place in European Championships and World Championships. After this I started to understand how it worked.

I’m in a smaller city, I’m in Coimbra and the faculty know me so they started to understand my needs, we also have some rules for athlete-students so they started to apply them so I could be more flexible. I think if I was in Lisbon it would have been impossible, but because it takes ten minutes to get from training to class, I’ve made it work.

So can we call Catarina a doctor?

Almost! It’s already been 10 years in university, and I’ve managed to compete and train at a high level at the same time, so my focus has always been on judo. The plan B is the medicine, and it is really hard, I put the priority on judo so I can manage well the study part with exams and classes.

I have periods where I focus so much on studying and not being so present in the medicine, but because I’ve been doing it for so long, I think I’ve learned how to manage it well and I know what to do, it feels more natural, but now, I’m finding it more fun because I’m almost at the end! In the next couple of weeks I will send in my thesis, so I have all of these big things happening together with this and the European Championships, it’s really exciting to be so close to finishing and getting my degree. I’m so proud that I’ve done this, it has been a really long time for me.

Normally, the degree would have taken six years so still a very long time, I have colleagues in the university that take seven or eight without sport or other commitments. I chose for it to be longer, it allowed me to split the year and continue in sport and really focus. You know, travelling, training camps, competitions, they really take a lot of time, it’s physically and mentally demanding. Even during the camps, we have multiple trainings a day and you have to fit in studying sometimes, after an emotional day having to do this work!

This isn’t the end of study however for Catarina, who already has a specialty in mind,

I really want to be connected to sport, in Portugal you need to do an exam, and after this you get a grade which determines which specialty you can go in to, which options are available, higher the grade the more you have to choose from! For me, I want to be connected to athletes, I know how it feels, I’ve been through this myself, I think my experience at high level is very different to a doctor who has learned only from the books.

At 17 years old I for sure didn’t think I’d be completing this degree and have these medals, but for me it was just a normal thing, it felt like the natural path, I wanted to go from junior to senior and get to the highest level possible, no matter what that was. It turned out pretty well I think! I think when you look to the past and think of the things you could do differently, yes there are some small errors, but if I didn’t make those mistakes, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, or the athlete I am, so in the big picture, I’d say no. Everything has happened just the way it was supposed to.

Judoka

Catarina Costa

Author: Thea Cowen

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