Ayana Akli isn’t quite ready for her tennis career to end, but South Carolina’s graduate student standout already has some plans for life off the court. She’s looking forward to the upcoming NCAA Tournament as well as finishing her master’s degree.
“I really enjoy building things, and I’ve always enjoyed math,” said Akli, who already has her undergraduate degree in civil engineering and is now working on a master’s in structural engineering. “Originally, I wanted to be a rollercoaster engineer and design rollercoasters. I also want to do something that will really help people, so I want to develop green infrastructure in underdeveloped countries. That’s the main goal right now. I want to travel everywhere.”
Akli, along with football’s Kai Kroeger are South Carolina’s nominees for the H. Boyd McWhorter Scholar-Athlete Post-Graduate Scholarship. The SEC provides the league’s male and female McWhorter Scholar-Athlete of the Year Post-Graduate Scholarship recipients with a $20,000 post-graduate scholarship. The 26 remaining male and female finalists for the award will also receive a $10,000 post-graduate scholarship.
“This is really big,” said Akli, who is hoping her collegiate career will continue for a few more weeks with the start of the NCAA Tournament on May 3. “It speaks to all of the work I put into the classroom as well as on the court. Honestly, I was really shocked.”
Once the NCAA Tournament is over, Akli will begin her professional tennis career, so she will still have to use her time management skills to balance tennis and finishing her master’s work.
“I’ll have time to do more work, but the plan is to keep playing, so I will probably be taking most of my classes online to accommodate for all the travel,” Akli said. “You have to work your way up to the big tournaments that everybody knows about, such as the U.S. Open. I’ll start with smaller tournaments, so I’ll just be grinding and basically playing every week to gain points and build your rankings. I think it will be easier to manage because college tennis is more team stuff, so you have to accommodate everyone on the team’s schedule, and you had a lot of extracurricular stuff. When I leave college, I’ll be setting my own schedule and when I practice.”
Akli played in a few professional tournaments last year, which should help in her transition.
Akli has piled up a lot of wins and accolades during her collegiate career. She earned…