Sergio Olmos was 17 years old, six foot nine inches tall, and had three options: a career, an education, or a long journey to a strange land to pursue both.

Universities in Spain, Olmos’s home country, do not have sports programs. Olmos could have begun a professional basketball career or gone to college in Spain. But doing both, blending twice-daily practices and away games with homework, classes and tests, would have been practically impossible. Olmos wanted to continue to play the game he loved and earn the degree that was so important to him and to his parents. So despite speaking no English, he chose option three: basketball and a degree in the United States. He chose Temple.

"I talked to [former Owl] Pepe Sanchez, who was playing basketball in Spain,” Olmos says, “And he told me that Temple was a great school and that I would have four great years here.”

Soon Olmos was playing for Temple’s storied Division 1 basketball program and working toward his bachelor’s degree in mathematics. But he was a long way from home.

“I was lost the first months. I couldn’t understand conversations or watch TV. The first year, there were times when I said, 'all right, tomorrow morning I’ll pack my bags and I’ll leave.'”

He persevered, and Temple’s Intensive English Language Program helped him become fluent in English. He did well in school, including in his favorite class, Differential Geometry, and made friends both on and off the basketball team.

Olmos adjusted so well that basketball coach Fran Dunphy told the Philadelphia Daily News, "If you said to me I need to go to dinner with any one of our players tonight and break bread with them and have a conversation that would be mature, enlightening, profound, I would choose Sergio Olmos. I think he's got a great way about him. He has a great sense of who he is, and I think that's always a pleasure to watch and see in somebody his age."

Dunphy began coaching the basketball team before Olmos’ sophomore year. The Owls struggled that season, but bounced back and won the Atlantic 10 tournament the following year with Olmos as their starting center. The victory is Olmos’s favorite moment at Temple. In 2008-2009 they repeated as league champions.

On May 14, 2009, now seven feet tall, Olmos will walk across the stage at the College of Science and Technology’s Graduation Ceremony to receive his bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He plans to return to Spain to play professional basketball, and hopes to move close to his hometown of Elda.

“I think coming to Temple was the right choice,” Olmos affirms. “I learned English, I got a mathematics degree and the experience of playing college basketball. It was a great experience.”