As Hispanic Heritage Month comes to an end, track student-athletes Cruz Gomez and Valery Tobias continue to celebrate the importance of their families’ culture.

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month is important to Gomez, a senior, and Tobias, a graduate student, as their families are from Mexico. Both are from the Rio Grande Valley, close to the border of Mexico, where they learned how to cherish the importance of their Hispanic culture. 

“We have a lot of culture, tradition (and) food, and all that is great to share,” Tobias said. “It’s nice to be proud of your roots and culture and be excited to share (that).”

To Gomez and Tobias, Hispanic Heritage Month is critical to understanding and honoring Hispanic culture. It allows people to learn about Hispanic history and traditions beyond stereotypes. Without it, finding that sense of pride in being Hispanic can be challenging.

“Hispanic Heritage Month is something I didn’t (used to) have, (and) that’s one of the reasons it took me a while to be proud of my heritage,” Tobias said. “Having that month where you appreciate Hispanic culture brings me a lot of joy. I want that for kids growing up with similar situations, where they feel like they are foreign in this country and strangers here.”

To them, Hispanic heritage means many things. For Gomez, hard work is one of the first that came to mind.

“Being Hispanic, I just think to myself how fortunate I am to be here and that nothing is free in life. I had to work every single day just to make it here,” Gomez said. “We’re so lucky to be here. People like us are not supposed to be here.”

Family means everything to Gomez. He remembered how his family always celebrated Christmas, New Year’s Eve, birthday parties and other occasions growing up because, “It’s just what we do.” Gomez said his father showed him that hard work and being there for your family is essential to Hispanic culture.

“He’s provided for us for so long, and there’s not a day that he doesn’t wake up and go to work, and I see that,” Gomez said. “Sometimes when I have to go to practice, and I don’t want to go because I’m tired, I just think back to that. He’s probably tired too, but he can’t say that he doesn’t want to go.”

Like Gomez, Tobias and her family share a deep-rooted love for one another. Tobias also remembered the holiday celebrations and being at her grandma’s house. Around Christmas, her grandma made tamales and, coming from a Catholic family, they would hold a posada — an at-home reenactment of Mary and Joseph seeking lodging — and prayers. Tobias is very close to her family and loves spending any time she can get with them, making her decision to become a student-athlete five hours from home in Austin a difficult one.

“In a Mexican household, everyone is so close together. It’s hard to leave because your family is everything to you,” Tobias said. “I wanted to take a risk because I was very close to home and in a small town, but I knew this was a chance for me to have a better future. I feel like the support of my family really helped me make the right decision.”

Gomez and Tobias both take extreme pride in being Hispanic student-athletes at Texas. They achieved the dream many families from the Valley have for their kids of pursuing their passions and careers. The two are inspirations back home, and they both love being able to make people proud of their heritage and give them hope.

“There’s a lot of people, a lot of kids, that come up to us and tell us that it’s so amazing we’re here because they see that we come from the same place, and we made it,” Gomez said. “So they see that and get inspired, and they want to do it.”