As summer rolls around, most Penn students know exactly where they will spend their few months off of school: in an office for an internship, traveling for one of Penn’s summer programs, or perhaps doing research in a lab.
There is, however, a whole other side to some Penn students’ summers — a small number of student-athletes who choose to capitalize on their precious free time to fully invest in their sports.
For senior squash player Malak Khafagy, summer meant finishing out her professional squash season at the British Open in June before training back on campus for the rest of her offseason.
Originally intending to spend the summer in her native country Egypt, as she had done in previous years, Khafagy came back to Philadelphia early to work more closely with her strength and conditioning coach at Penn. It also gave her the chance to practice with different hitting partners, some of whom play for Team USA.
Khafagy is currently ranked No. 31 worldwide, with a goal to break into the top 20. That means practicing three times a day and competing in the full professional squash season, something that can be very difficult during the academic year on top of a full collegiate squash season.
“I just didn’t have anything left in me … I was just breathing air,” Khafagy said of the end of last season.
The summer is used to recover and gather the energy for another nine months of competition. Khafagy wants to play for the Egyptian national team, and is hoping to qualify for the 2028 Olympics.
Junior breaststroke specialist Watson Nguyen shares that dream. He, too, decided to spend the summer focusing entirely on swimming after a busy semester that included a popular Penn pastime, recruiting for a junior summer internship.
“If I’m trying to do my best with this recruiting, then I’m going to swim this summer,” Nguyen explained. “Because if I’m going to be sure I’m going to be working junior summer, then I owe it to swimming. … If I don’t take this opportunity to have a free summer that really doesn’t matter that much, when will I ever take it again?”
Nguyen spent the first month of summer at home in Texas, spending time with family and training with his club team, before coming back to work with his Penn coaches. He appreciated that over the summer, he was able to get “a little bit more individualization” in practice.
His work paid off. In July, Nguyen took home the gold in the 50-meter breaststroke and the bronze in the 100-meter breaststroke at the USA Swimming National Championships in Irvine, Calif.
“I was really focusing on swimming and training, and then you know, I went to the meet and I swam great,” Nguyen said.
Sophomore thrower Jessica Oji also had a travel-filled summer. Her NCAA season ran until June, when she came in fourth place at Outdoor Track and Field National Championships. After that, it was off to the United Kingdom, where Oji continued representing the Red and Blue at the Transatlantic Series, but her most important meets of the summer were yet to come, with her first senior competition on the horizon.
In Glasgow, Scotland, Oji made her senior debut for Team Nigeria at the Commonwealth Games, securing the silver medal in a field of seasoned professionals. Just a few days later, she was back on the field, this time at the World U20 Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Ore.
“I’ve already been to Oregon Stadium multiple times, so it almost felt a little bit like home turf, and I was able to pick up the gold there. … I didn’t really know I was going to go to [the] Commonwealth [Games], but U20 Worlds was something I really wanted to get, so [I was] very much happy that I was able to come away with that,” Oji said.
Oji nonetheless spent most of the summer training with Penn throws coach Isaiah Simmons. Despite not being able to travel to the Commonwealth Games, Simmons coached Oji virtually, sending training plans and working together with the Team Nigeria coach.
Competing for Team Nigeria also meant Oji could learn from more senior athletes on the team who have more experience. Oji appreciated meeting “some really cool people” and getting to pick their brains about preparation.
She went shopping in Glasgow alongside Tobi Amusan, the former world record holder in the 100-meter hurdles. Chukwuebuka Enekwechi, who competes for Nigeria in the men’s shot put, passed on some of his knowledge to Oji.
“A lot of his cues and the way he was trying to explain things to me, I was like, ‘Wow, I really don’t understand that.’ But, you know, he was trying his best to give me some new drills that I could do, commenting on my throws,” Oji said.
Basketball sophomore center Kate Lipatova had a similar experience on the Azerbaijan 3x3 national team.
Lipatova was the youngest player by far on that team, traveling to Japan, France, and Azerbaijan with three players who were at least 10 years older than her, and was able to learn from professional basketball players. It was a stark contrast to her time on the Azerbaijan U20 team earlier this summer — an experience she said allowed her to grow as a leader for the squad.
An opportunity to play on the national team came as a surprise to Lipatova, who didn’t know she would have the opportunity to compete over the summer until the spring semester ended.
“When I was coming back from America I was in an airplane and my coach texted me that I have an opportunity to play for Azerbaijan. … And I was like, ‘Yeah, why not?’” Lipatova said.
With basketball as her only focus in the summer, Lipatova was able to dedicate time training and conditioning, under the guidance of the team Azerbaijan coaches. It was a welcome change from the life of a student-athlete, a respite, as she puts it, from homework and 8 a.m. classes.
The experience also reinforced her desire to play professionally in the future, whether on a club level or for the Azerbaijan national team.
Lacrosse junior goalkeeper Orly Sedransk spent her summer months living out her childhood dream. Although she had gone through the youth lacrosse setup for Team USA, she always harbored a desire to represent Israel internationally.
For Sedransk, the possibility to compete for Israel at the 2026 World Lacrosse Women’s Championships in Tokyo emerged her freshman year. The opportunity materialized the following fall. Sedransk was able to play significant minutes in the tournament as Israel finished with a bronze medal.
On a team with both high schoolers and seasoned veterans, Sedransk was able to bond with the older players over their shared Jewish identity.
“It’s like serving different roles on different teams. And then also just getting to appreciate different things. I feel so grateful being back at Penn, just having that break this summer, because I really haven’t played lacrosse in any other environment besides here in the last two years,” Sedransk explained.
Playing over the summer was comparable to the few games Penn women’s lacrosse gets to play after finals in May, a time period the players jokingly call “pro lax season.” With classes done, the players can solely focus on lacrosse.
“I’m obsessed with lacrosse,” Sedransk said. “So it’s definitely a completely different world to not have to worry about school during that.”
It also prepared Sedransk for another goal: representing Israel at the 2028 Olympics. It will be the first time that lacrosse is an Olympic sport since 1908, making the opportunity all the more meaningful.
But, even when competing at world championships, it is hard for some student-athletes to escape Penn’s hustle culture. While Oji and Lipatova loved being able to focus solely on their respective sports, others felt a pressure to be doing something other than training.
Sedransk, for example, worked for the first two months of her summer.
“Especially at Penn and with all my friends getting internships and everything,” she said, “it was a little hard for me to kind of pass that up.”
Nguyen, who spent the summer doing finance research at Penn, liked having a task that forced him to switch off from swimming. He explained the urge to do research in the first place came from a sense of pressure to do “at least something very minor towards your career.”
Khafagy spent the summer working as a marketing intern for a startup with similar feelings to Nguyen.
“I got this weird anxiety feeling that I’m not doing what every single Penn student should be doing,” Khafagy said.
Athletes feel compelled to honor their commitment to Penn, their sports, and their futures.
As Khafagy put it, “Why am I here? If I wanted to go pro in the first place, why did I come all the way to the U.S.?”
