For a youth tennis prospect, it is all about you.

From the moment you step on the court for a tennis academy in Europe, it is a nonstop push toward the pros. You start getting calls from American colleges. You pick the one that you think can best help you get to the big leagues.

And then everything changes.

“Then it’s a team, and it’s ‘we,’ and then if you want to play after that, it’s back on you again,” DePaul tennis head coach Matt Brothers said. 

But those years of being a teammate, he says, are extremely important.

“There’s a huge benefit to it,” he said. “I think it will just help some of these guys to get their focus off of themselves and see they have a lot to appreciate that maybe they take for granted.”

For DePaul seniors Sven Moser and Matteo Iaquinto, this transition period has completely changed their perspectives on the place of tennis in their lives.

“For student athletes I think the biggest challenge is, sports has always been such a big part of our identity,” Moser said. “And then, once you get closer to graduating and you’re not able to make the next step of going professional, I won’t say you feel lost, but it’s like part of you is missing.”

“I feel like this year was also all about trying to find different passions and realize that tennis isn’t your whole life.”

Early in the season, Moser had to make a difficult decision: play through a lingering midfoot sprain or take a medical redshirt and play another year. He chose to return to DePaul for one more season, for more than one reason.

Moser will pursue a Master of Science in finance. The native of Bern, Switzerland was set on studying psychology with the goal of becoming a sports psychologist when he committed to DePaul.

“But as time went on and you start to network more, being on LinkedIn and stuff, I kind of came to realize how narrow of a field it is, and how hard it is to enter,” Moser said. “You need to get a master’s — probably a Ph.D. — you need to do all those hours to get certified.”

Moser took a finance class last quarter and felt engaged, leading to his decision to pursue his next degree.

Iaquinto — a Palermo, Italy native who was a unanimous Big East All-First Team selection in 2024 — has reached the end of his college tennis career and is deciding whether to keep playing or pivot.

“One thing I’ve learned from this year, of course, after pondering all these endless ideas of what to do next,” Iaquinto said. “I’m still not sure of playing tennis or not, yet.”

Despite the stress and anxiety of not knowing, Iaquinto says the pressure is off and his goal for the summer is to return home and let it sink in. The much-needed rest will allow the departing DePaul star time to begin processing his thoughts and “figuring it out from there.”

It is something many DePaul seniors will be pondering this summer: do what you know, or take a chance on something completely different.

Brothers, who just finished his 18th season as DePaul’s head coach and has watched his seniors grow since they arrived on campus in 2021, has advised Moser and Iaquinto on their next steps. He believes Iaquinto — who he calls “Zoolander” because of his “modeling aspirations” — should keep playing.

“I hope that he chooses to play,” Brothers said. “We just talked today, just having lunch to discuss things. And it’s frustrating. Your season doesn’t end the way you expected it to … but … his best tennis is still ahead of him.”

This season, by all accounts, did not end the way the program had hoped. After winning three Big East championships in four years (2021, 2022, 2024), DePaul bowed out of the first round of the tournament against a Georgetown team they eliminated last season and swept 7-0 this March, just a few weeks before the tournament. The loss came down to the wire, and Brothers says he is still processing the results.

Brothers told The DePaulia in February that winning the conference tournament was “the standard.” Now, his perspective may have shifted.

“These guys would go around with a chip on their shoulder, because everywhere they went, everyone had a facility and better gear, more gear and just better training, all kinds of stuff,” Brothers said. “Now, we still lack some things, but life appears better than it’s ever been to be a DePaul men’s tennis player.”

With greater resources come greater performers, but the team may have set their sights too far after tasting repeated success in the conference tournament.

“And all that takes more time, more dedication, more practicing more attention on the guys,” Brothers said. “And so we’ve gotten away from doing things together off the court … things that I think always was good for the guys, because it just really gave them some perspective of what they have here and how fortunate they are to just be college students.”

Brothers took time to praise his three seniors, including Germany native Jona Gitschel, for staying loyal to the program and setting an example for a young DePaul team that Brothers says has not mastered the mental aspect of tennis just yet. He is grateful to have Moser back next season to continue modeling the winning team culture that resulted in three post-pandemic conference championships.

That example is not always easy to set. Brothers gave a scenario of two freshmen roommates being called in to compete against each other for the last slot in a competition. After competing, one of the two is chosen, and in comes the elephant in the room as they return to their shared dorm.

For a team as international as DePaul with no two players from the same country, Moser and Iaquinto say they have learned endless lessons from each other in these moments, learning more about themselves in the process. They have changed together, discovered their interests outside of tennis together and gotten away from that pre-college theme of all you, all the time.

“You know these guys will be buddies forever,” Brothers said. “That bond that started here will last with those guys. Wherever they are in the world — and they might not see each other or talk to each other every day — but I know how it is with my teammates from more than 30 years ago now … it feels like it was just yesterday.”

Like many DePaul seniors who will walk the stage in June, Moser and Iaquinto are ready to write their next chapters, with or without the centrality of tennis in their lives.

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