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Sarah Quintero was a member of one of the most dominant ASU athletic programs in school history. Since her first year on the ASU women’s triathlon team in 2016, she helped Cliff English’s teams to four consecutive national championships.
Originally from Round Rock, Texas, Quintero attended Cedar Ridge High School and studied Supply Chain Management. She recently took some time to speak with House of Sparky about her ASU career in another edition of our Devil Distancing series.
What was your favorite memory as a Sun Devil?
It’s so hard to pick something. I would say my favorite part of all of it was the little in-between stuff. The biggest part I miss was us all being in the locker room, all leaving practice together, showing up to practice together, those little things.
Yeah, the games, and that stuff, but I think those memories of all leaving practice and complaining about how tired and exhausted we were and that will see each other in four hours to do it again. I definitely miss that a lot.
What does a typical day in your life look like today?
I am currently working at Dell Technologies in Austin, Texas. I’m from here, so I just moved into a house. I was just staying with my parents in the beginning of all of this.
I still wake up pretty early. I get coffee and a snack. We’re working from home, so I will check some emails and then pretty much I am working until the end of the day which is about 5 p.m.
It’s really flexible, if you have to the run to the store in the middle of the day, I can do that. Or at lunch if I want to go ride, I can do that. I still train, not at the same intensity, but I can wake up before work and go then if I wanted, but some days at lunch I’ll go run around a lake near where I live and then come back to work.
If you could relive one moment from your ASU career, what would it be?
I would probably say nationals my sophomore year, which is the first time we had hosted. It was really fun, I was really happy with my race. It had been a busy year, we had a lot of girls on the team.
There was a lot of people because it was this big, new thing we had never done. I had a lot of friends and family in town. A lot of alumni came in. The weather was good. Everything really came together and it was something we hadn’t done before so I would say that was probably my favorite race.
Is there a player or a coach from your time at ASU that had a major impact on your life?
I would definitely say Cliff, our coach. He saw that I wasn’t a triathlete and always believed in me and supported that. He’s just a really, really smart coach and I think there’s a lot of coaches out there that maybe aren’t as smart.
He loves the sport, he loves everything about triathlon. He is really into the history and all of the little things, and I think that is really cool.
That’s something we all have gotten, and it’s a special experience and situation to be in. He really teaches people, and especially for me not coming from a triathlon background. That was an awesome experience.
Is there a Sun Devil you didn’t play with that you enjoy watching?
I really like following (track & field athlete) Maggie Ewen. She’s awesome. I just think she is so strong and such an awesome athlete and I think it’s really cool to see her story because our time at ASU overlapped.
To see everyone speak so highly of her and her personality, that’s something I really like following.
More from the Devil Distancing Series: