Player Profile: Gerson Penza
By Michael St. Germain
Senior sport management major Gerson Penza has helped the men’s soccer team to an excellent start for the 2006 season. Penza is from Willemstad, Curacao, an island of the Netherlands Antilles in the Carribean.
He moved to the United States when he was 16 years old to attend the Subiaco Academy in Subaico, Ark., where he graduated high school and was a standout soccer player.
From blue waters, sandy beaches and a constant warm climate, Arkansas was an extreme change for Penza. For the first few years, he was extremely homesick, but now, going into his eighth year in the States, he is very used to the people and climate.
Most people from Curacao go to Europe for an education, according to Penza.
“I wanted to be different,” he said.
Planning to graduate in the summer of next year, he hopes to get an internship doing something related to sports marketing or soccer.
