International Students Feel at Home in College Sports

The University of Southern California Trojans beat their crosstown rivals, the The University of California, Los Angeles Bruins, winning 28-23, on Nov. 18, but it was really not a one-day game. Ahead of the big event, the Trojan Knights, a men’s-only student organization at USC, prevented Tommy Trojan from being pranked by UCLA students and guarded the mascot for a whole week (a tradition since 1941). For most international students, these kinds of strange traditions in college sports are the first thing they learn about in their first semester.

“When I first came to UCLA, the first thing the student assistant told us was about the football rivalry between UCLA and USC,” said Xingyu Li, a Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) soccer player at UCLA. Throughout the football season, the rivalry between the two universities is always a hot topic on campus. “The rivalry is really fun, in all the aspects,”said.

Shuxia Zhang, a Chinese student at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, was surprised by a quirk in college sports. “When our school team wins, no matter which type of sports, all students would come to our quad and throw toilet paper to the trees,“ she said. “I was shocked at the first time when I saw they were full of toilet paper, but then I feel a sense of school pride.”

For these and other international students, college sports is part of their lives in the U.S., helping them relieve stress, enjoy their familiar activities or exchange cultures with locals.

According to the 2017 Open Doors Report, published by the Institute for International Education, international student enrollment is declining nationwide, but the number in California is increasing. USC had 11,387 enrolled international students in fall 2017, occupying nearly a quarter of the student body, and represented a 7.7 percent increase compared to the last year.

The college sports culture in the U.S. is quite unique, and some international students said they soaked up the atmosphere studying here. Some said this even changed their perspectives on sports.

Anna Olasz, a Hungarian student majoring in business communication at Arizona State University, competed at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. But she is not the only one student athlete in the Olympic Games. “There was a fair amount of student athletes around me, ” Olasz said, “I had multiple teammates from college there but I also hang out with professional athletes as well.”

In the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, the U.S. made great achievements in a wide range of sports, but what made it different from other countries is the majority of athletes are from colleges. Of its total 555 athletes, nearly 80 percent of them are college students.

Olasz just graduated from ASU this May. She started swimming when she was 6, and she is on the Arizona State swim team.

“They actually do not have a college sports culture in my country so that is one of the reasons why I came here,” she said. Swimming is a big part of her life, so deciding to be an athlete or to be a student in Hungary was difficult. “I knew I really wanted to continue swimming, and I knew I really wanted to get my education, too, so coming here basically was my best option.”

Fans are crazy about sports in America, and especially on game days, when they come hours before the game, barbecuing and drinking with their families and friends. Tailgating is one of the popular activities around games. “They do not really care about the win and loss, other than just watching the game, people see this as a chance to get tighter,” Li said. The UCLA soccer player likes stretching himself on the field and feels his experiences in participating in college sports have also deeply changed his opinions of sports. “It does not really matter whether you know these sports well. In American universities, sports are not only about sports. It is a lifestyle,” he said.

Stepping into a totally different culture, international students often find sports could be a global language, helping them better adjust to a new environment and develop a stronger sense of campus community.

“When I first came here at my freshman year, I could not speak fluent English,” Olasz said, “I just moved here from Hungary, and then in the school everything is just different.” Being part of the big swimming team at ASU made her feel much better. “I have 40 friends that I can contact anytime, and our team at ASU is really tight. I had a great experience,” she said.

Hui Yeon Eim is a South Korean student at USC, and this is her first year. She thinks her experience in the USC lacrosse club means more than just de-stressing herself. “Because I love my team members and my team a lot, I get more affection towards our school also,” she said.

Ziyi Yin is a graduate student at USC, passionate about a wide range of sports, including American football, which she was not even clear about the rules of when she was in China. “I attended a watch party last year during the Super Bowl, and that was the first time I watched the game with others’ explanation. Since then I just fell in love with this sport,” she said.

“I am a super fan of all kinds of sports. It is not the sport itself, and more importantly you can feel the connections with people,” Yin said, “At that moment, we are all Trojans instead of identifying ourselves as international students. In sports, there are no borders, no colors, no races.”

With more participation in college sports, students would have more interactions with each other, so it is not only a unidirectional adjusting process, but it is more like a cultural exchange, and helps disprove stereotypes.

In the ASU swimming team, about half of the swimmers are international, Olasz has made close friends from different countries such as Brazil and Iceland. “It is such a mixture. I learned a lot about being open-minded about other cultures, going through different situations,” she said.

Unlike that swimming team, the CSSA UCLA soccer team is composed of students all from China, but according to Michael Zheng, they have friendly games with local teams, and joined the intramural games playing against students of all races. “We let them know that Chinese students can also play good soccer. That is one thing I feel like it is influential,” Zheng said.

According to Michael Zheng, Asians are sometimes stereotypically considered as thin and short, not good at physical contact.

“A little bit, but it is common,” Zheng said, and he found sometimes American players tend to use physical contact to butcher them, “But not much, especially when you play more soccer with them, you will make a lot of friends here.”

He thinks the soccer environment here is much better than before, and college sports is the foundation of American sports. “As an observer, I am also part of the American sports culture. They taught me a lot new things about American sports culture, and I feel like it is much more advanced than China,” he said, “So I decided to stay here, to see why it is so advanced here, why it actually leads the world in sports.”

Some student athletes said they are the only one international student in their team, but this does not mean they are ignored. Ashleigh Plumptre, an English student at USC women soccer team, is one of them.