Princeton University Athletics
World Renowned
March 01, 2001 | General
Konrad Wysocki was born in Poland, and his family moved three times there before relocating to Germany. After two more moves there, he came to the United States two years ago as a high school junior.
Today he finds himself as a freshman at Princeton and an emerging force with the Tiger basketball team.
His story is interesting. It is by no means unique.
Wysocki is part of a solid minority of foreign athletes at Princeton. It's a group that faces an often-difficult adjustment to college that goes beyond figuring out where the classrooms are and how many coins to put in the washing machine.
"People all over have heard of Princeton University," Wysocki says. "It's famous all over the world."
In the 2000-01 school year, Princeton has 71 foreign athletes, representing approximately 7% of Princeton's total athletes, hailing from 15 countries and six continents. Of the 38 varsity teams at Princeton, 29 have at least one foreign athlete on the roster.
The overwhelming majority of these athletes are from Canada, which has sent 47 of the 71 foreign athletes to Princeton. Next on the list is the United Kingdom with seven, and no other country has more than two.
In addition to Canada and the United Kingdom, Princeton has athletes from Ethiopia, Singapore, Pakistan, Switzerland, New Zealand, Mexico, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Brazil, Japan, Turkey and Peru.
Not surprisingly, more foreign athletes play hockey than any other sport. Beyond that, there are strong contingents in sports like rowing, field hockey and track, while sports like fencing and squash, with fewer participants, have high concentrations.
"It's not easy being a foreign student," says Wysocki, whose accent is mostly European with a little North Carolina mixed in from his two years of high school in Greensboro. "The language can be a big problem, not just for athletes, but for all foreign students. A lot of them come directly from their country to here. I came from two years of high school in the States, and that helped me."
The field hockey team has three high profile foreign athletes, twins Melanie and Aviva Meerschwam from the Netherlands and Ilvy Friebe from Germany.
"For every foreign athlete we've had," says Princeton field hockey coach Beth Bozman, "the freshman year has been a huge adjustment. Everything's just a little different for them, that's all. When the twins first came here, they didn't speak English well. There was a big pause between hearing and speaking for them."
Even for some Canadian athletes, whose English is as native for them as it is for any American, adjusting to life in a new country takes time.
"It's funny," says Maureen Davies, who came to Princeton from Thornhill, Ont., outside of Toronto to play softball and is now the head coach. "In Canada you think the culture is not very different. I remember coming to Princeton and being overwhelmed by how American everything was. It was completely different. The attitude in the States was so different, in terms of the confidence everyone had and the spirit everyone had."
Davies' story is fairly common among foreign athletes. She grew up as one of the top softball players in her country, and when it came time for college, there was no option of playing competitively in Canada.
"We only have university athletics in a few sports, like hockey and football," Davies says. "For me, my first thoughts about going to school in the States was as an avenue to pursue softball and have a scholarship. Ironically, I came to Princeton, which obviously doesn't have scholarships. It was the best of both worlds. For a lot of foreign kids, their initial thought of going to college in the States is for athletics."
Davies, being Canadian, has concentrated at least some of her early recruiting in her homeland. Other coaches in sports which are stronger abroad than in the United States--squash, for instance--have no choice but to recruit internationally.
For others, though, the international reputation that Princeton has is the initial recruiting tool.
"What we've found is that as we've gotten better and become one of the top six teams in the country, foreign athletes contact us," says Bozman. "We have better name recognition than the other top schools. We get a phenomenal amount of interest among Canadians. A lot of that has to do with Amy MacFarlane ['98, arguably the greatest field hockey player in Ivy League history]. She opened the door for a lot of Canadians."
It's easy for Americans familiar with the system of youth sports in this country to forget that it's not always the same around the world. That was certainly part of the case for the Europeans on the field hockey team.
"The Dutch and the Germans rely so much more on skill than on fitness, for instance," Bozman says. "Here, our training program and conditioning program are so much a part of everything that we do. It's not that they're lazy or anything. Far from it. It's just a cultural thing, the way they approach things physically. It's something they needed to adjust to."
As for Wysocki, his period of adjustment continues. He speaks in a low, slow manner anyway, and he seems as comfortable as any of the other freshmen on the basketball team.
He also speaks for many of his foreign companions, at least in terms of his take on his early Princeton experience.
"It's great here," he says. "I love it. I wouldn't trade any of it for anything. I always wanted to come to school in the United States, and I'm glad I did."
He's not alone.
by Jerry Price
WORLD RENOWNED
Kirk Lamb
Cold Lake, Alberta
Senior * hockey
"Cold Lake's about three hours from Edmonton, the closest real city. You can't get into a lot of trouble in Cold Lake. You just play sports--hockey in the winter and baseball in the summer--and that's what everybody did. That's about as simple as it gets.
"Especially where I'm from, out West, you want to play [major junior hockey] in the Western League. That's where you wanted to go. College was more of a second choice. Growing up, that's all you ever hear...major junior this, major junior that. I was 12 hours north of the border. I didn't hear a lot about college hockey. Out West it's relatively a new thing, the idea that you can come to the East to the States and play hockey. Those two had always been separate."
Kavitha Krishnamurthy
Oakville, Ontario
Sophomore * tennis
"When I first came to Princeton in the fall of last year, they had a preseason [tennis] ranking for all the freshmen, and I wasn't even on the list. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be ranked, but I had won Canadian nationals four times, got to compete in the junior grand slams and was among the Top 40 internationally.
"Because I was Canadian, not many people knew about me, and that took some of the pressure off. I went into my first couple of tournaments unseeded. It would've seemed like a disadvantage initially, but it worked in my favor. I felt absolutely no pressure. It was great."
Carola Iba?ez Cortina
Mexico City, Mexico
Junior * crew
"I decided to take the SATs, just to see what they were like, and I ended up doing pretty well. So I asked for applications and decided to apply just by the look of them. I applied to Princeton just to see if I could get in.
"I didn't even consider rowing until I got the application and on the cover of it there was a boat. I remember seeing the boat, and I associated it with Ivy League rowing. There isn't too much rowing in Mexico, but I did have a friend who rowed. When I saw the picture, I just knew that I wanted to do it...that I wanted that challenge and I wanted to dedicate myself to it. I actually started rowing in Mexico before coming to Princeton, just to get ready."
Jen Neil
Kitchener, Ontario
Sophomore * hockey & softball
"It's hard for Canadian softball players to come down here. There's a lot of recruiting for hockey--the scouts are always up there --but in softball, we have a short season and our programs don't get a chance to develop as much as, say, Southern California.
"I was recruited for hockey, but I was a walk-on for softball. Even though Princeton had [then assistant, now head coach] Mo Davies, they still didn't know much about Canadians. It was odd, because I had played for the Canadian junior women's national team and went to Taiwan for the Junior World Championships that previous summer. I relied heavily on hockey when I was choosing schools and once I got here, it worked out okay.
"It always used to be that whatever season I was in, that sport was my favorite, but now, softball is becoming my No. 1 because I want to go to the Olympics, and I have the confidence that I can get there. I'm going for my softball dream."
Juan Valdivieso
Peru
Freshman * swimming
"Both of my parents were born in Peru, and they came to the U.S. to study on Fulbright scholarships at Boston University for their master's degrees, so I was able to compete for Peru in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
"I first competed for them in 1995 at the South American championships and again in 1998 and '99. I started breaking national records, and it looked like I had a shot at making the Olympic team. In August of 1999 I competed in the 200 butterfly at the PanAm Games and my time qualified me to make the cut for Sydney.
"My performance wasn't my best time, but it was a thrill to compete there. My grandfather was in the 1936 Olympics for Peru in Berlin, he played soccer. It was neat to go through similar experiences and to know that I was marching out under the same flag."
Aviva Meerschwam
Amstelveen, Netherlands
Junior * field hockey
"In Holland field hockey is an extremely big sport. Usually if a sport's on TV, a lot of people come out to watch it, but field hockey is popular because a lot of people play it.
"Clubs are very big, and they're still growing. Our national teams have always done very well. The field hockey teams are the pride of Dutch sports.
"I started playing when I was seven, but now kids start very young. It's very good to see. It was great to play when I was young. When you're young, you don't have the pressure. I remember playing and doing it for fun. Here [in the U.S.], when you start playing in high school, sometimes you feel the pressure of all the things that are hard in sports, making the team, wondering if you're going to start...
"All the way through it was still fun. The clubs are very much based on field hockey--just practicing field hockey, as opposed to all the other pressures that come along with it."
Ankanksha Hazari
Hong Kong
Freshman * squash
"I wasn't planning on coming to the United States at all, but when I was playing at the World Junior Championships in Belgium, Trinity had sent a coach who introduced me to schools in the U.S.
"Princeton had the top team, and I had the most communication with the coach. There wasn't a pressure for me to come, it was more of an invitation.
"I had never been to the U.S. before I came here in September. I was scared of the academic standards. I wasn't sure what to expect, but people are very welcoming here."
Esty Dwek
Geneva, Switzerland
Freshman * golf
"I play golf at home for the national team, but staying for a university in Swizterland and playing golf wouldn't have been possible. My mom's American, and my dad got his master's degree here, so American universities run in the family. I wanted to get away from home, meet new people and continue playing golf.
"I had no real difficulties adjusting to the U.S., but there is one difference related to golf. We use the metric system, and it takes me so long when I have to think in my head before I hit the ball. I have to translate meters to feet in my head before choosing my club. That would be the only thing I had to adapt to. It wasn't very hard."
Will Evans
Whitford, New Zealand
Sophomore * squash
"I was born and raised in Hong Kong. I'm half Chinese and half English, and I see myself just as much Chinese as English. I started playing squash before I left Hong Kong and continued in New Zealand and got very high in the rankings. Then I played at Princeton in the World Junior Squash Championships in 1998. In fact all of the other sophomores on this year's squash team were also there.
"I never thought about going to America at all. But, Princeton just seemed so much more attractive than other schools. It was all fairly random. It was a very lucky thing that just fell into my lap."
Tensai Asfaw
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Senior * track
"My goal is to do graduate work in foreign service or public policy, then work for an international group, the U.N. hopefully, or some global aid program. Eventually, at an early age, I hope to get back and help my extended family.
"I'd like to say help the whole country, become a leader there, but with 60 million people speaking 95 dialects, with all the history of conflicts, it's an impossible thing. I have to remember my roots, go back and help, but I know the challenge there.
"I'm no super-patriot, but I have deep feelings for my country. In the end, there's nothing like home."