Photo courtesy of Tampa Athletics and Wandalie Marie Taveras.
Graduating senior and former UTampa athlete Megan Schreck recounts her time at UTampa and how it has strengthened her on a fundamental level.
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By Wandalie Marie Taveras
TAMPA, Fla. — The women’s beach volleyball team at The University of Tampa wasn’t favored to win the 2025 national championship, but they packed all their bags and traveled to Gulf Shores, Alabama, anyway.
Megan Schreck, a senior biology major, was a junior at the time. She knew what she signed up for, but that didn’t make it any easier. Every moment of free time was filled with studying. Finals were right around the corner.
On the bus, on the beach, in between matches, she studied, trying to balance her academic and athletic life. Her organic chemistry and physics notes were filled with sand.
“I had to literally zip up that part of my life,” Schreck said. She didn’t realize at the time that that would be the last time she competed as a student-athlete at UTampa.
Looking back, Schreck’s journey at UTampa started long before she ever set foot on campus. She went outside her comfort zone by calling coaches all over the country and pitching herself as a valuable player to their team when she was only 16 years old. Although she knew she didn’t want to play the sport professionally, she channeled her drive and ambition into playing volleyball to help her grow as a person.
“Coach Catanach picked up the phone, and the running joke is that it was COVID, so he was just bored in his office, and he was like, this kid is calling him,” Schreck said with a laugh.
When she arrived at UTampa, her ambitions only grew. Schreck made her interest in playing beach volleyball and indoor volleyball known and by the spring of her sophomore year, she had a spot on both rosters. Playing both sports forced her to sharpen her skills and gave her a competitive edge. It also reflected the mindset she had: choosing a harder path in order to grow.
“I think that that’s what allows Tampa to be so successful over the years,” she said, referring to the athletic department that matched her ambition and encouraged it. “It’s this relentless pursuit of the details, and we’re gonna do every little thing right because it will matter.”
Her mindset extended to all areas of her life. After Schreck finished her first beach volleyball season with a championship ring, she decided to pursue a more rigorous academic career as well. She started as an allied health major, but going into her junior year, she decided to major in biology with a concentration in molecular biology. This shift challenged her in a new way, changing the balance she had previously established between athletics, academics and her personal life.
As the year progressed, juggling her academics and athletic career became increasingly difficult. By the end of her junior year, it became clear that her ambitions conflicted with one another. If she wanted to graduate within four years, she couldn’t keep up with the schedule athletics demanded.
She spent the summer months after her junior year reflecting and evaluating her options. Schreck realized that she had one of the most difficult decisions to make.
Choosing between two fundamental aspects of her life: athletics or her academic goals.
“You can look up and see behind you, but you can only reflect for so long, or you’re gonna hit something in front of you,” Schreck said. Her dad sent her a physical rearview mirror that she kept in her locker since her freshman year, always reminding her of the importance of reflection. Doing this grounded her in her pursuit of excellence and was extremely important that summer.
By the end of summer, she decided to give up her athletic career to pursue academics. The decision freed up her time and allowed her to invest in her relationships, academics and herself in a whole new way.
“It was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done, no doubt,” Schreck said, referring to her athletic career at UTampa. “I still have that competitive drive that I’m learning to reassign to other areas of my life, but I just feel so grateful for what volleyball gave me.”
Schreck confessed that the hardest part about making this decision was the unknown. The hours working alongside her teammates with the common goal of competition created a bond. She knew that this decision would harm those friendships or, at the very least, change their foundation.
But Schreck never backs down from a challenge. She redirected her time and attention towards her faith and community off the court. What she once centered around competition began to shift toward community.
“I think that my faith being so important to me, I knew if it didn’t have some sort of structure or accountability…I think that it would have been very easy for [my faith] to fade into the background,” she said.
Throughout her senior year, Schreck served as co-president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and continued to find new ways to challenge herself with her newfound time. Postgrad life is right around the corner for Schreck with new challenges and opportunities. The same mindset that led her to embrace difficulty at UTampa is the same one she will carry into whatever comes next.
“I still remember the feeling of winning that last game,” Schreck said.
The University of Tampa’s women’s beach volleyball team won back-to-back national titles. Sand kicked into the air as the whole team rushed onto the court. Schreck looked over to her teammates’ smiling faces, then turned toward the sidelines to see the people that mean the most to her: her family, best friend and boyfriend all supporting her from the sidelines.