For the love of serving others

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  • Trey Gooch
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SWOSU senior tight end Trey Gooch has been playing football for a long time and has learned valuable life lessons at SWOSU.

“Playing football at SWOSU has taught me the value of hard work and teamwork,” Gooch said. “I realized I can get more done in a group setting than just on my own. I have learned not to put myself first and learned time management. I had to wake up early when I did not want to, which taught me discipline. Playing football at SWOSU has taught me a lot of valuable life lessons I can take with me for the rest of my life.”

Gooch graduated from Putnam City West High School in 2017 and was a 3 sport athlete. He played baseball, basketball and football growing up. He realized football was his ticket to playing college sports, but enjoyed playing all three sports.

“Going through high school, I wanted to play football somewhere,” Gooch said. “SWOSU was a good fit for me to come play football because the academics fit my needs and my style. The football program and tradition really attracted me, as did the small class sizes and great community.”

Along with playing football, Gooch is very involved at SWOSU. He is the vice president of Student Government Association, the Pledge Caption of the BYX Fraternity and is majoring in biomedical science with a minor in chemistry and is completing premedical prerequisites.

“It is a lot to juggle for sure and I have not been great at juggling everything,” Gooch said. “I have learned through trial and error how to manage my time and I could not do this all on my own. I draw a lot of my strength, power and perseverance through Jesus and living for Him is my number 1 priority.” Gooch said he likes making life better for other people, along with being a light in other people’s lives and that is what keeps him going.

“If I can do my job on earth by making life better for someone else, that is really what motivates me,” Gooch said. “My motivation for going into medicine is to help others. I like helping people and it is what gets me up in the morning.”

Gooch said he really enjoys playing football for head coach Chet Pobolish.

“Coach Pobolish has been great,” Gooch said. ‘He loves and wants the best for his athletes and will fight for us. One thing I really admire about coach Pobolish is his honesty at all times. He is fair with us if we are fair with him.”

When playing at Putnam City West, the team struggled, but they made the playoffs his senior year. They lost to eventual state champions Bixby in the first round. Gooch said he really enjoyed playing high school football and he likes college football as well.

“High school football was fun and much easier than playing college football,” Gooch said.

“Coming from a bigger high school, we were not always a very good football team. We had trouble competing with the Tulsa schools. I really enjoyed both and each has their pros and cons, and both are really fun.”

Gooch said some advice to give to incoming freshmen who want to play football at SWOSU is to be a team player and go to class.

“First and foremost, go to class,” Gooch said. “Also, waiting your turn and redshirting is not an insult. I realized quickly I was not the best player, but I was part of a team.You have to delay gratification to improve yourself. It is not about you anymore but as a team. Try to find a guy who is older than you for advice because they have done this before.”

Gooch has lots of great memories playing football at SWOSU, but his first road trip to Harding was most memorable.

“Traveling to Harding the first time was really fun,” Gooch said. “It was a really good time, even though the outcome did not go the way we wanted. There have been countless memories on and off the field. My teammates are from different cultures and backgrounds and it has been a blast getting to be around my teammates.”