UD’s International Tennis Player on the Court
While all Crusader athletes have to travel for games, some have traveled thousands of miles just to be here at the University of Dallas. Originally from Nantou County, Taiwan, Shu-Lun (A.K.A George) Chang plays for UD’s tennis team and is a junior psychology major.
Chang transferred from Illinois State to UD in the spring of 2023. He was looking for a school that would give him more time to play tennis, while also providing a rigorous psychology program.
Chang says that when looking at different schools to transfer to, “D1, D2, D3 doesn’t matter for me. The first thing I searched was their psychology program. This is the first school that has a better Psychology program than ISU.”
Chang has been playing tennis for most of his life. His father began coaching him and his brother when Chang was four years old. As the years went by, his brother stopped playing tennis, and there was even a time when Chang himself considered quitting the sport.
He said that when he lost a match, or if a game went poorly when he was younger, that “I would just blame everyone else except for me.” His father gave him a book, the title of which roughly translates to “It’s not always someone else’s fault” in Mandarin, and the ultimatum of “tell me tomorrow if you want to keep playing or not.”
Chang read the book, and the next morning told his dad that he would continue playing tennis. After that, he began to view his matches with a different attitude and became more passionate about playing tennis.
When looking at schools to transfer to, Chang’s focus was mainly on the academic and athletic aspects. When he arrived at UD he was surprised to find out that it was a Catholic school.
When he was looking over his class schedule for his first semester at UD, he recalled being surprised at the courses he was taking, saying “literature, politics, history, and Bible with the capital B? I was like, wait a minute, what is that? Why is it capital?” Coming from a culturally Buddhist background, he was worried he would struggle with the theology classes.
Fortunately that was not the case, as he took “Understanding the Bible” with Fr. Thomas Esposito, who was very open to questions. Chang said “I really enjoy seeing a whole different religious perspective. I think it’s interesting because it’s kind of like psychology.”
One of his favorite moments playing for UD’s tennis team happened during a match at the University of Texas at Dallas. He looked out at the stands and saw his friends who had surprised him by driving out to support him.
“I wasn’t planning to tell them I have a match, because it was like 40 minutes away. But then they asked me, and said ‘yeah, we’ll come’. I never told them directly that I would really appreciate that. I was really happy they came over and watched me play,” said Chang.
For Chang, playing tennis is also about the comradery of his teammates. Remarking on this, he said “It’s just not fun because of winning, but I enjoy all my teammates being there for me. All my friends were there supporting me. I think if they werent there, I might just be in my head.”