USU recruits athletes from around the world

By Tyler Nicholes

March 1, 2004 | Just five years ago the only international athlete in the National Basketball Association that people really recognized was Vlade Divac. Now there are more than 68 players from 33 countries, including last year's Most Valuable Player Tim Duncan.

This trend is not only being seen in professional sports, but also at the collegiate level. In the 2003-04 academic year Utah State University has eight international athletes. Volleyball has the most with Dominique Arsenault, Quebec; Zuzana Cernianska, Czech Republic; and Marijana Kordic and Ana Mirkovic, both from Croatia.

Tennis has Hung Sooh Park, South Korea and Hannes Schenk, Italy; track has Dayna Barrett, Canada; and men's basketball has red-shirt junior Cassiano Matheus, Brazil.

Recruiting international athletes can be difficult. First it's difficult for coaches to know of an international athlete who they would like to recruit. Second, coaches have to rely on statistics because they rarely get to see them perform or do drills. Third, coaches either have to fly to the recruit's country or fly the athletes to Utah. Both are very expensive and time consuming.

"Vaughn Courtney, who was the head coach of women's track at the time called to recruit me. There had been several Swedes here before me and one girl who actually went to High School with was here then. She told him about me and he had also seen my results in Sweden. I didn't know about USU before that," said Agatha Sullivan, former USU heptathlon athlete from Sweden.

Sullivan said she had been doing track since she was seven or eight. Sullivan said her sister did track until her thirties and would have done so herself if she hadn't started having children at 24 years old.

Mike Strauss, director of media relations for USU athletics, said coaches find out about international athletes through the athlete inquiring about the program themselves or through mass-emails sent out.

Some of the top teams in the nation recruit international athletes Tim Duncan, who is from the U.S Virgin Islands, played for Wake Forest. This years NCAA women's volleyball champions University of Southern California had two international athletes. Brigham Young University's men's volleyball team ranked second in the nation has six international athletes. Arkansas track team that won nationals in 2003 had nine international players.

Having international players can be a great advantage to a team. They bring a lot of experience and play on a lot of competitive club teams. In the United States, children tend to focus on baseball, basketball and football; whereas children from other countries tend to focus on other sports such as soccer, track and volleyball.

One disadvantage is the language barrier. Sullivan said although she knew English from school it was still difficult to get used to all the English words for track terminology and slang. This can be particularly difficult when playing team sports.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association, the governing body for college athletics, has rules set up for the eligibility and recruiting of all players. They also have the Guide to International Academic Standards for Athletics Eligibility. Some rules are international athletes must take either the ACT or SAT and get a minimum score, they must send their academic records in their original language with a certified English translation and they have to still be amateurs.

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