A group of tennis athletes met in the floor lounge of Peregrine Hall during the peaceful hours of a Friday night while most students were relaxing in their dorm rooms. They laughed as they discussed their on-court triumphs and losses for the day. 

This close-knit group of student athletes is more than simply a team, they are neighbors in the PNW dorm. 

PNW’s athletic teams are routinely housed together in the school’s dormitories. Even though athletes are not required to live in the dorms, 182 currently do. Coaches see dormitory life as positive because the arrangement encourages closeness and camaraderie. 

“It is a great benefit for our student-athletes living in the same apartments,” said the head coach of Men’s Basketball , Boomer Roberts. “Playing college sports is a chance to combine everyone’s strengths and … compete as one team. In our Men’s Basketball program, we put a huge emphasis on spending time [together] and becoming family, so doing life together off the court only enhances our team’s growth.” 

That is why teammates who play and practice together also live together.

“Student athletes and their teammates need to be close,” said Korey West, Director of Housing. “But they also need to find friends outside the team. That is one of the reasons why we place all first-year students, regardless of their background, together. That is how we believe we can get as many students to bond as possible.”

Placing student-athletes with non-athletes is meant to encourage the start of friendships and community. But West believes the university’s efforts do not rely on coincidence or hope.

“We understand that student athletes may want to live and surround themselves with their teammates,” West Said.. “To change their mindsets, it needs to come from the top: Their coaches.” 

The housing department meets the coaches every year, and we explain to them why we do not just assign an entire floor. 

“We remind coaches about … how we want the University Village community to prosper,” West said. “Besides, four athletes can still live in a single apartment, we just do not want an entire floor to be dedicated solely to athletes.”

“We’ve also had a lot of student-athletes take up some student worker positions within housing,” she said. “Whether they are resident assistants, community assistants or maintenance workers, they get to interact with different people on a daily basis. This helps bring our mission to make the whole community a happy place for all.”

The integration of athletes and non-athletes is relatively new. In 2020, when COVID-19 began to spread, the university tried putting all members of a team on the same dorm floor. West said the plan was to isolate student athletes, who had a lot of exposure to other people at games, from the rest of the students in University Housing. 

Viviana Plaza, a Business Administration graduate student who was an RA during COVID-19, recalls not being entirely happy about the decision.

”I had mixed feelings about this arrangement,” she said “On the one hand, it was easier to track athletes and issues within the specific rooms and halls … When one team tested positive, it was easier to quarantine the whole apartment. This was especially important because none of them would be socially distant in public spaces.”

Now a senior RA, Plaza prefers Housing’s current approach of integrating different people together to make a community. 

“I prefer the mixed setup because athletes don’t feel as distant. I actually know the names of our athletes now,” she said. “In 2020, I was in one building while all the athletes were in the other. It was uncomfortable having to enforce rules to people who didn’t know who I was.”

Coach Roberts approves of the policy that assigns student-athletes to live together.

“PNW Men’s Basketball has many different states and countries represented in our program,” he said. “Many times the new student-athletes are roommates with former students. This allows athletes who aren’t familiar with PNW to learn from their teammates, who have a good grasp of the community.”

Hayley Tsuen of the PNW Women’s Tennis team is especially grateful for being able to room with her teammates. 

“I have been living in housing for just over two years now and for every year I have stayed with my teammates,” she said. “Living with teammates has honestly been a blessing as we all help each other through our practices and travel days. It makes it easier to relay information and allows us to be closer as a team away from the court.”

Tsuen, originally from South Africa, also believes that her friendships with people around her improved from this arrangement. 

“The living arrangement has not only impacted our connection as a team, but also our friendship through the years,” she said. “The countless memories we share together in the dorms are unforgettable. As an international student athlete, it was daunting coming to a new country with unfamiliar faces, but having my teammates start my journey here at PNW with me has made a huge difference.”

While Tsuen truly appreciates that she gets to live with her teammates in a single apartment, she also looks forward to making new friends outside her team. For her, that is what college life is all about.

“The idea of having the entire tennis team on one floor sounds good, but I truly do enjoy creating new friendships with other people that are on my floor,” she said. “I have made greater connections through living across from other teams and even from residents [who] don’t play any sports. I think it is crucial for an incoming student athlete to experience other relations outside of their own team as it allows people to learn and grow in different ways.”