From Venezuela to state: How College Station's Dominguez has found a new home

Already a two-year varsity mainstay and a team captain, College Station boys soccer sophomore Tomas Dominguez is good at making challenging things look easy.

Dominguez's ability to answer challenges shouldn't come as a surprise. He and his family dealt with a life-changing challenge five years ago by moving to the U.S. from Venezuela.

"If you look back, me I was 11, my brother was 15-16, we were not going to have a future," Dominguez said. "So, they were like I think if you go here, I think it will be a brighter future and a way more comfortable way to live."

Five years later, Dominguez has helped the Cougars reach the Class 5A Division I state title game for the first time. College Station will face unbeaten and defending state champ Prosper Walnut Grove at 1:30 p.m. Friday at Georgetown's Birkelbach Field.

The Dominguez family is from Caracas, Venezuela's capital, and had been looking to move for some time. Dominguez says Venezuela has been in "quite a difficult situation for about 25 years" and had been under a dictatorship for a long time.

His family first started seriously thinking about moving in 2019 and was getting ready to move to Dallas in 2020 before COVID-19 put a wrench in those plans and restarted everything.

In what he can say was only a "miracle," they had an opportunity in 2021 as their U.S. lawyers let them know early in the summertime they would be moving to College Station.

"And if you go here, choose to be here, you're going to move in like about two weeks," Dominguez recalled. "And it was like, 'Whoa, OK, this is big-time right here. I remember that talk like yesterday basically my mom and my dad brought my brother and I to the living room and we had a talk and we were like 'Hey, you know what? If this is it, this is it.' We don't really care where we go, we just want to go there. We're really tired of it."

Once here, things moved fast for Dominguez and his family. They needed to get settled in an entirely new country and find a house.

For Dominguez, personally, he also had to learn an entirely new language as he went into sixth grade.

"I remember my first day at school I cried because I didn't even understand a single word of what was said," Dominguez said. "I had to use my phone to translate from English to Spanish, it was kind of like funny if you say it that way, but I mean it was a big struggle. I came here really with a lot of fear because I thought people weren't going to accept me for who I was."

After a first couple "rough" months, Dominguez says started feeling comfortable in his new home by his third month.

His fears also proved to be unfounded as he says a lot of people accepted him for who he was, loved his accent, his personality, his background and everything about him.

"And that's something quite unusual that you see not only here but just in the world," Dominguez said. "You see people accept you like that, so openly and they support you no matter what, it's rare to find and something that's a really big boost and helped me really become who I am today.

"I'm not really a narcissistic type of guy, I like to be as humble as I can just because of the background that I came from but honestly, I feel like when you go around every day you see me as a confident guy that just likes to be comfortable, likes to be with people and likes to socialize. That is thanks to all the support the guys from my childhood gave me when I came here."

Many of his initial friends made weren't soccer teammates, just friends he made at school, and Dominguez not only credits them for making him feel welcome but also helping him learn English.

Dominguez says after six months, it was probably a "street" type of English that you could barely understand but he could at least express himself.

His English as a Second Language teacher also helped him continue in soccer. His teacher, Yvonne Dang, whose children Zach and Ellie both played soccer at College Station, introduced him to the local club team Cavalry.

College Station coach Chad Peevey says he's glad Dominguez is a Cougar.

"He's kind of stepped into a role [this year] and he's done a really good job of keeping the energy and keeping guys focused and kind of being another coach on the field and even at practice, just making sure there's energy every day and we're competing hard," Peevey said. "That's one thing that he's really helped this group out is just every day going to work really hard and not taking a day off."

The feeling is mutual as Dominguez is glad where he and his family are at.

"It's a blessing to be here for sure," Dominguez said. "When you see people and you talk about the city they always say, 'Oh, it's boring and whatever,' and all that which partially could be true, but honestly I sometimes talk with my family about it, I feel like my life could have been so much different if we were to go to Dallas than if we were to go here.

"We were not going to go to Fort Worth or Frisco, we were going to go to downtown Dallas. And coming from a city that is small and it's simple but it kind of gets you is what really made us fall in love with the city, and not only the city but I think the state and the U.S. in general."

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