When someone’s career profile reads off with top 20 spots in program history in 3-pointers made and points scored, two All-NESCAC seasons and two third team D3hoops.com All-Region 1 acknowledgements, one expects to hear about a journey that was as smooth as the drive down Route 66. Yet, for graduating senior Sofia Gonzalez, this road was windy and unpredictable, though it still left her with everything she could have wanted from her collegiate experience.
From a young age, Gonzalez recognized basketball was a sport made for her, telling the Daily that her basketball journey began at age 5, “playing on the low hoops.” Pushed by her father, Christopher — a coach at the University of California, Santa Barbara — Gonzalez received several offers and had initially committed to another school before the pandemic took that opportunity away from her and brought her to Tufts. Yet that radical change, she said, was “God’s gift to me … [because it’s] led me to so many opportunities and friendships and memories that I would have not been able to make.”
Gonzalez remarked on the challenge that was the pandemic, acknowledging how, for the first time, “You had to learn how to keep yourself accountable.” Arriving at Tufts in fall 2021, when campus protocols were still heavily restricted, Gonzalez acknowledged the pivotal role being on the women’s basketball team played in getting her settled. “It was like you had your own family within this giant school,” she said.
One way that Gonzalez was able to quickly adapt to life on the East Coast was by building strong bonds with the other members, especially graduate student point guard Callie O’Brien. The two developed a unique tradition that quickly grew a life of its own: TikTok.
As Gonzalez tells it, “We had made a joke TikTok in the locker room, before our first practice, and then me and Callie, just kind of bonded. [We were] like, ‘We look good doing it. Like, let’s just keep doing it.’ And then we did it before our first game, [in my first] year. And then it kind of just rolled into its own tradition that it then became before every single game.” After they would film their elaborate, collaborative dances in the pregame, they would wait to see if they earned the victory and therefore earned fans the right to see their newest two-step.
While she did not get many playing opportunities in her first year, only getting 86 minutes, Gonzalez was able to gain a lot of knowledge and experience from the upperclassmen on the team, learning “how to bring people together and how to make sure that the team is cohesive” — skills that would prove valuable in her later years.
After a year spent on the bench, Gonzalez went back to California after her first-year campaign with a mentality that “I’m going to work so hard that there should not be a reason that [head coach Jill Pace] shouldn’t be playing me.” To do so, she worked out “two, three times a day, every single day, basically, over that summer” and made a dramatic transformation from the bench to the best in the business.
The transformation proved effective, as Gonzalez went from scoring 2.7 points per game as a first-year to scoring 11.3 points per game, earning herself a spot in the starting lineup she would never lose. Once she entered the starting five, Gonzalez became the shooter that the team had been looking for, shooting 39.2% from 3-point range while making 78 triples. This success earned Gonzalez a spot on the All-NESCAC Second Team.
Just as she did, the team as a whole made a giant leap in the 2022–23 season, winning 24 games for only the 10th time in program history, including winning the NESCAC regular season title with a buzzer-beater win over Trinity on Senior Day. The two teams would meet again on the Cousens Gym floor two weeks later in the NESCAC championship game, with the Jumbos looking for the divisional crown. In the biggest moment of her career, Gonzalez stepped up, making three triples and scoring 15 points as the Jumbos clinched the NESCAC title and cut down the Cousens nets, in what she called “one of the most exciting moments of my life.”
The excitement didn’t end there, as Tufts won their first three NCAA tournament games to set up an Elite Eight showdown with Christopher Newport University on a snowy Saturday evening in Medford. The game was electric from the tip, with both teams trading blows. Gonzalez assisted an O’Brien 3-pointer with nine minutes to play to cut the Jumbo deficit to one and bring the crowd to its feet. Unfortunately for the Jumbos, the undefeated Captains would respond with a 21–6 run to close out the game and end the Jumbos’ terrific campaign.
Gonzalez still remembers the game vividly, describing it as “the coolest moment I think I’ve had here at Tufts. I vividly remember how many people were there, and that is something that I always think about whenever I go to shoot at Cousens. … I think that it really made me feel that it wasn’t a [Division] III basketball game; it felt like it was really real. Also, to be able to say that you made the Elite Eight is something else that’s really just incredible to say.”
While the team faced more difficulties in her final two seasons, Gonzalez continued to enhance her play, adding additional elements to her game. As a junior, she increased her creativity, averaging 1.8 assists per game, a career high. In her senior year, she once again made a massive jump on both sides of the floor, recording a career high 13.4 PPG, 6.0 RPG and 58 steals, while moving herself into the top 20 in program history in points, 3-pointers made and free throw shooting percentage, earning All-NESCAC First Team honors and being named to the D3hoops.com All-Region 1 second team.
When looking back and reflecting on her place in the record book, Gonzalez looked at the other names on the list, pointing to Jumbo legends like Maggie Russell (LA’24) and Erica DeCandido (LA’20), and said, “I’m very proud. It’s a very relieving feeling that my work, after four years, has put me in a position to be in that list at all, because I’ve looked at the list before [and] those are the greats of the greats of Tufts [women’s] basketball. And while personally, I know I’m great, I don’t think that I’m up there, but it’s amazing to even be considered that I’m on that list after the countless hours that I’ve put into the sport and [the] dedication that I put [into] this team.”
Before finishing her interview with the Daily, Gonzalez gave one last piece of advice to the teammates taking the mantle from her and the other members of the Class of 2025: “All gas, no brakes. Just know that there’s no better time than now to just keep pushing and working hard because at the end of the day, you’re going be a senior, and you’re going to be graduating and probably never playing a legit collegiate basketball game again, so there’s no reason to not try as hard because you don’t get another opportunity to do it.”
As for Gonzalez, while she might not get another opportunity to be a collegiate basketball player, she will always remain in the Jumbo record books as a name to chase from beyond the arc. If someone wants to pass her, there will only be one way to get there: all gas, no brakes.
