SAN ANTONIO – For as long as she can remember, Lauren Rios has wanted to work in the medical field. But a pair of surgeries that she’s experienced in recent years has cemented her commitment to give back to others.
Rios, a junior on the UTSA women’s golf team and a medical humanities major in UTSA’s College of Liberal and Fine Arts, was gaining experience as part of her high school’s sports medicine staff when she learned something that, as a 16-year-old, would be life changing.
“I was working athletic physicals and, also being an athlete, we had to get our physicals,” Rios said. “So, I left my workstation and went to do my physical. When I went to see the doctor, they listened to my heart and noticed a murmur so I wasn’t cleared. I had to go see a cardiologist before I could be cleared to play golf for the school.”
Rios, then attending Coppell High School, was a high-level athlete and was asymptomatic. Her mother Janet assured her that heart murmurs were common and that Rios likely had nothing to worry about.
When Rios met with a cardiologist, however, she was informed she had been born with an atrial septal defect and would need to have heart surgery.
“The top two chambers of the heart – the atriums – the wall that separates the two, I had a hole between the two of them,” Rios said. “The deoxygenated blood and the oxygenated blood were kind of mixing together. It was definitely scary, but it also felt very surreal. Because I wasn’t having any symptoms, I didn’t think the problem existed.”
Rios decided to have surgery around her school’s winter holiday break in 2019. She left school a week early to have the surgery so she could be back in time for the start of the spring semester. But Rios’ return to the game she loved took longer.
“I couldn’t play any golf until the start of February, and then slowly I could start putting, start chipping a little and then full swing,” she said. “I would sometimes go to practice and watch my teammates and be there for support, but it was very hard being on the sidelines and not doing anything.”
Upon her return, Rios put together a highly impressive athletic and academic career. She helped Coppell advance to a pair of state tournaments and finish sixth in the UIL Class 6A state tournament as a senior. Her team captured the regional title and finished fourth in the state as a junior. Rios was an academic all-state selection and a member of the National Honor Society.
In 2022, Rios was named a recipient of the Ben Hogan Perseverance Award.
Selecting where her next stop would be was an easy decision for Rios. The opportunity to play for the Roadrunners under head coach Summer Batiste proved to be the perfect fit.
“I loved the connection I had with the coaches,” Rios said. “All the resources we have that are available to us, there’s always someone offering to help. I really wanted to stay in Texas close to my family and I have family in the San Antonio area, so that was a big plus.”
She began her collegiate career in the fall of 2022, playing in seven tournaments and earning a spot in the lineup for the Conference USA Championship. But it wasn’t long until she was beset with another injury and was forced to have knee surgery. The experience strengthened her love for the game.
“Taking that break, I realized how much I missed doing it every day,” Rios said. “I kind of take it for granted sometimes, being able to go out and practice. I look at life a little bit different. I’m more grateful for everything I have.”
Her latest surgery also furthered Rios’ passion for pursuing a career in medicine.
“Having the doctors explain what happened to me and even just hearing the medical students be with the doctors I thought was so cool,” she said. “When I had my knee surgery, I was asking my doctor everything and I saw footage and pictures. That just really interested me.”
Rios hopes to find a way to combine her two passions of sports and medicine to create a future for herself where she feels she can make the biggest impact on others.
“After golf, I want to go to medical school,” she said. “I’m not exactly sure what I want to do yet, but I’m really looking at orthopedics and sports medicine. With sports, I know a lot of my friends who are business majors who are finding ways to stay within athletics and I realized I want to do that in the medical field, so I think that’s the best path.”
Rios believes that her experience as an athlete who has gone through medical challenges that prevented her from competing for periods in her life will allow her to bring a unique empathy to her future career. And while her path has been anything but easy, it has provided clarity on a career that she knows
“In the moment, it’s easy to be kind of negative and down,” Rios said. “But, in the grand scheme of it, you’re going to come out stronger and there’s always a purpose.”
Rios and the Roadrunners are set to compete in the American Athletic Conference Championship this Monday through Wednesday at Southern Hills Plantation Club in Brooksville, Fla.