Coco Gauff’s Teammates All Moved Out of the Olympic Village — But She’s Staying: ‘Trying to Take….see more

Coco Gauff’s Teammates All Moved Out of the Olympic Village — But She’s Staying: ‘Trying to Take Everything In’ (Exclusive)
Fellow Team USA tennis star Emma Navarro tells PEOPLE she opted to move to a hotel because she “didn’t sleep basically at all” in the Olympic Village

Most of Team USA women’s tennis has decamped to a hotel, but Coco Gauff is holding strong in the Olympic Village.

The 20-year-old tennis superstar revealed on TikTok on July 28 that she was the only American woman remaining in the official Olympic housing, and she and teammate Emma Navarro confirmed the news to PEOPLE later that day.

“Yeah, I stayed in there for three nights I think, but I didn’t sleep basically at all,” Navarro, 23, tells PEOPLE. “I slept cumulatively six hours, so I had to move out and go to the hotel.”

Adding that she made the choice “reluctantly,” Navarro says it was necessary. “I cried a little in the lobby the day I moved out, I think just from lack of sleep.”

But Navarro, who won her first singles match on July 28 6-2, 6-0 and faces Bulgaria’s Viktoriya Tomova on July 29, says that other than the lack of sleep, the Olympic Village was “incredible.”

“It was an incredible experience just getting to be in the village,” she says. “And we rode an elevator with Katie Ledecky and met Simone Biles and saw so many incredible athletes. So that’s something I’ll never forget.”