University of Pittsburgh Athletics
Off Script: A Diverse Group of Panthers
9/29/2017 1:15:00 PM | General
Pitt Hosts Nearly 50 International Students
The dream of pursuing an athletic career at the collegiate level is one that many young athletes have. The university setting in many nations, however, does not allow students the same combination of athletics and sport, thus sending many to the United States with goals of tackling both advanced academics and high-level athletics.
From football to gymnastics, volleyball to baseball, Pitt is an obvious choice when it comes to combining both athletics and academics. One of the premier universities in the country, Pitt welcomes students from across the world to participate in its well-regarded academic programs, and continue their dreams of high-level college athletics. As a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Pitt offers student-athletes the chance to compete at the peak level of college sports, while earning a world-renowned degree.
The transition to such a demanding lifestyle can be grueling for some, learning to manage being a full-time student, as well as a top athlete, is no easy task. For Pitt's nearly 50 international student-athletes, this can be even more of a challenge, with language and cultural barriers added into the already difficult transition into college life. Pitt, however, offers these student-athletes an advantage, as nearly 10 percent of the student-athlete population is comprised of international students, allowing some common ground for the group, which represents more than 20 countries across the globe.
While heading off to college may be the first time many students are away from home, that's not necessarily the case for many international students, as chasing the dream of excelled athletics often pulls the young talents away from home.
"I attended a school two-and-a-half hours away because it was a better combination of school and basketball," said Kyla Nelson, a freshman on the women's basketball team, who hails from Worthing, England. "Basketball was always something I wanted to do and I always wanted to be the best I could be."
Nelson grew up around basketball, spending most of her time at athletic facilities watching her father and brother practice. While basketball doesn't hold the same popularity in England as it does in the United States, she was forced to play on an all-male team until she was 14 years old.
Nelson isn't the only Pitt athlete to relocate at a young age due to sport, Natsumi Okamoto, a junior on the women's tennis team, moved from Tokyo to Spain in order to train at a higher level, before enrolling at Pitt in 2015. After being introduced to tennis through television and comics, Okamoto fell in love with the sport, committing to it fully at age 11.
"It is very hard to find tennis courts in Tokyo," said Okamoto. "I played in one tennis club that was two-and-a-half hours away from my house. I ended up being too young and it was too much transportation time, so my parents and I moved to Spain, 10 minutes away from a tennis club."
With her tennis racket in hand, Okamoto moved to Barcelona at the young age of 14, attending school with no understanding of English or Spanish.
"I went to an international school so English was first," Okamoto noted. "It was one year and very intense. I had to catch up with everyone because we were in high school and it was only my first year of the language. The second year was when I started to take Spanish. Learning the two were hard, it was like starting from zero."
The move from Spain to the United States wasn't planned for Okamoto, as her classmates helped teach the future Pitt tennis standout of the opportunities available at American universities.
"I did not know how the athletics system worked in the U.S., but my classmates talked about it," she added. "It turned out that a lot of students from this tennis academy went to colleges in the U.S. and that is when it became really attractive to me."
Unlike Okamoto, the decision to attend a university wasn't as simple for Pitt men's soccer midfielder Marcony Pimentel. Originally from Brazil, Pimentel moved to Freiburg, Germany with his family, where he began to hone in on his soccer skills.
"I was not willing to go anywhere," he said. "I wanted to stay at Freiburg and keep developing and to do my journey there. I decided to make a good plan for myself and I knew that if soccer didn't go as planned, I wouldn't have anything left."
Since he was able to walk, Pimentel had been player soccer, taking to the streets as a kid in Brazil before developing his skills in a more structured league in Germany. From playing on teams that used backpacks and shoes as goals, moving to an organized league in Freiburg helped prepare Pimentel for the day-in and day-out grind in the United States. Adding another language to his repertoire, however, was another test.
"The transition was very difficult at first," he noted. "I had to learn very fast. I tried to learn German with a private teacher. I was young and not very willing to learn because it is a very hard language. I ended up quitting the classes because I didn't want to do it. Then I started to learn by repetition. I would watch shows like Dora the Explorer and I started to repeat sentences and words. And just kept doing that over and over."
While language and a cultural barrier is a transition for some, for others bridging the gap isn't that difficult. For Pitt baseball pitcher RJ Freure, the move to the U.S. was simple. Having played in the States as a member of the Ontario Blue Jays, it was a goal of his from an early age to play baseball in America, for the Burlington, Ontario native, and Pitt was an easy choice.
"I was in awe! I loved the atmosphere," he recalled. "Pittsburgh reminds me of home because it is very similar to Toronto. It's only about four to five hours from home so my family can still visit regularly, but I love being here. We've got a few guys on the team this year who are Canadian, so it's even more comforting to have them around. It's good to be able to talk about Canada with some people and use the metric system. I cannot do Fahrenheit. Everyone talks about how it is 62 degrees Fahrenheit and I have to turn to my phone to see what that is in Celsius, that's probably my only complaint," he laughed.
Teammates who can relate is often a strong component to making the adjustment to college in the United States, as swimmer Eben Vorster discovered when he moved to an off-campus apartment with two of his South African teammates.
"I get to speak a little bit of my home language, Afrikaans, from time to time so I feel really at home," said Vorster.
From grade four, English is taught in South African schools as Afrikaans has been removed from many curriculums and is predominantly replaced by English. The switch from teaching in Afrikaans to English has caused unrest in South America, triggering a decline in the number of universities in the country. A lack of opportunity originally brought Vorster to America, taking a chance on finding a good fit in a new country.
"The universities would close up for three to four months and you would miss so much work, so it just was not worth it," he said. "It was at that moment when I decided to take a chance and look at swimming overseas, and then Pitt came along. You have to do what you have to do in order to get a good education and do what you want."
Like Vorster, football kicker Kirk Christdoulou did not plan on attending a college in the United States. But, after being noticed during an Australian football game, he decided an American education might be in-store for him.
"I was playing in game of Australian Football and a dad of a teammate came up to me after a game I played well in and said 'You remind me exactly of a kid who is now at Penn State, playing in front of 100,000 people' and I was shocked. I thought playing on a stage that big might be cool, so I decided to look into it," he said.
Christdoulou joined ProKick Australia and began focusing on school and training, hoping to pursue his new found dream of playing in the United States. After being accepted to Pitt, Christdoulou arrived on campus in January. He was accompanied by three other early enrollees, helping one another get acclimated to a university lifestyle.
Though Christdoulou's introduction to American football was short, for gymnast Lucy Brett, the sport of gymnastics has been engrained into her day-to-day for more than a decade. A time consuming, investment, gymnastics presents two direct opportunities for athletes in her native England, training for the Olympics or retiring at 16 to focus on school. Brett wanted more, and became one of the first athletes from the Academy of Gymnastics Portishead to earn a scholarship for gymnastics.
While the move to Pittsburgh was planned for many, it was the other end of the country that Nika Markovic thought she would be playing in. With the intent of attending the University of San Francisco up in the air after the departure of their head coach, Markovic made a quick decision to enroll at Pitt, seeing the campus and facilities from pictures and videos and Skype sessions with the coaching staff.
"I believe that everything happens for a reason, and even though I was scared to come here, not knowing anyone, I just felt something inside that this was the right decision and that I was going to like it," she recalled. "Playing volleyball and going to school is very hard in Slovenia because you usually play for a club and go to school separately, they are not connected like they are here. From my freshman year of high school, I knew that I wanted to come to play here."
The need to relocate in order to further develop your talents is a trend Markovic shares with men's basketball freshman Peace Ilegomah, who moved from his native Nigeria in 2015 to pursue a basketball scholarship. The 6-9 center relocated to Stamford, Conn., and attended Trinity Catholic High School, living with a host family before moving to New Jersey to be close to family.
The acclimation from Nigeria to the northeastern portion of the United States wasn't easy for Ilegomah, who had never owned a home computer or eaten a slice of pizza. The translation of many forms of Nigerian English to the American version was also hard for Ilegomah, who was often afraid to speak up.
"I remember that I would not want to speak in class because I didn't want to say a word that means one thing to me and something else in this English," he laughed.
With a diverse student population, both in athletics and the general student body, the University of Pittsburgh continues to welcome those from across the world to Oakland and its branch campuses. Currently enrolling more than 3,150 international students, the university boasts more than 7,800 international alumni. Many of those students have contributed both academically, and athletically, as Pitt is among the leaders in insuring diversity and inclusion, on and off the playing fields.
#H2P | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook
From football to gymnastics, volleyball to baseball, Pitt is an obvious choice when it comes to combining both athletics and academics. One of the premier universities in the country, Pitt welcomes students from across the world to participate in its well-regarded academic programs, and continue their dreams of high-level college athletics. As a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Pitt offers student-athletes the chance to compete at the peak level of college sports, while earning a world-renowned degree.
The transition to such a demanding lifestyle can be grueling for some, learning to manage being a full-time student, as well as a top athlete, is no easy task. For Pitt's nearly 50 international student-athletes, this can be even more of a challenge, with language and cultural barriers added into the already difficult transition into college life. Pitt, however, offers these student-athletes an advantage, as nearly 10 percent of the student-athlete population is comprised of international students, allowing some common ground for the group, which represents more than 20 countries across the globe.
While heading off to college may be the first time many students are away from home, that's not necessarily the case for many international students, as chasing the dream of excelled athletics often pulls the young talents away from home.
"I attended a school two-and-a-half hours away because it was a better combination of school and basketball," said Kyla Nelson, a freshman on the women's basketball team, who hails from Worthing, England. "Basketball was always something I wanted to do and I always wanted to be the best I could be."
Nelson grew up around basketball, spending most of her time at athletic facilities watching her father and brother practice. While basketball doesn't hold the same popularity in England as it does in the United States, she was forced to play on an all-male team until she was 14 years old.
Nelson isn't the only Pitt athlete to relocate at a young age due to sport, Natsumi Okamoto, a junior on the women's tennis team, moved from Tokyo to Spain in order to train at a higher level, before enrolling at Pitt in 2015. After being introduced to tennis through television and comics, Okamoto fell in love with the sport, committing to it fully at age 11.
"It is very hard to find tennis courts in Tokyo," said Okamoto. "I played in one tennis club that was two-and-a-half hours away from my house. I ended up being too young and it was too much transportation time, so my parents and I moved to Spain, 10 minutes away from a tennis club."
With her tennis racket in hand, Okamoto moved to Barcelona at the young age of 14, attending school with no understanding of English or Spanish.
"I went to an international school so English was first," Okamoto noted. "It was one year and very intense. I had to catch up with everyone because we were in high school and it was only my first year of the language. The second year was when I started to take Spanish. Learning the two were hard, it was like starting from zero."
The move from Spain to the United States wasn't planned for Okamoto, as her classmates helped teach the future Pitt tennis standout of the opportunities available at American universities.
"I did not know how the athletics system worked in the U.S., but my classmates talked about it," she added. "It turned out that a lot of students from this tennis academy went to colleges in the U.S. and that is when it became really attractive to me."
Unlike Okamoto, the decision to attend a university wasn't as simple for Pitt men's soccer midfielder Marcony Pimentel. Originally from Brazil, Pimentel moved to Freiburg, Germany with his family, where he began to hone in on his soccer skills.
"I was not willing to go anywhere," he said. "I wanted to stay at Freiburg and keep developing and to do my journey there. I decided to make a good plan for myself and I knew that if soccer didn't go as planned, I wouldn't have anything left."
Since he was able to walk, Pimentel had been player soccer, taking to the streets as a kid in Brazil before developing his skills in a more structured league in Germany. From playing on teams that used backpacks and shoes as goals, moving to an organized league in Freiburg helped prepare Pimentel for the day-in and day-out grind in the United States. Adding another language to his repertoire, however, was another test.
"The transition was very difficult at first," he noted. "I had to learn very fast. I tried to learn German with a private teacher. I was young and not very willing to learn because it is a very hard language. I ended up quitting the classes because I didn't want to do it. Then I started to learn by repetition. I would watch shows like Dora the Explorer and I started to repeat sentences and words. And just kept doing that over and over."
While language and a cultural barrier is a transition for some, for others bridging the gap isn't that difficult. For Pitt baseball pitcher RJ Freure, the move to the U.S. was simple. Having played in the States as a member of the Ontario Blue Jays, it was a goal of his from an early age to play baseball in America, for the Burlington, Ontario native, and Pitt was an easy choice.
"I was in awe! I loved the atmosphere," he recalled. "Pittsburgh reminds me of home because it is very similar to Toronto. It's only about four to five hours from home so my family can still visit regularly, but I love being here. We've got a few guys on the team this year who are Canadian, so it's even more comforting to have them around. It's good to be able to talk about Canada with some people and use the metric system. I cannot do Fahrenheit. Everyone talks about how it is 62 degrees Fahrenheit and I have to turn to my phone to see what that is in Celsius, that's probably my only complaint," he laughed.
Teammates who can relate is often a strong component to making the adjustment to college in the United States, as swimmer Eben Vorster discovered when he moved to an off-campus apartment with two of his South African teammates.
"I get to speak a little bit of my home language, Afrikaans, from time to time so I feel really at home," said Vorster.
From grade four, English is taught in South African schools as Afrikaans has been removed from many curriculums and is predominantly replaced by English. The switch from teaching in Afrikaans to English has caused unrest in South America, triggering a decline in the number of universities in the country. A lack of opportunity originally brought Vorster to America, taking a chance on finding a good fit in a new country.
"The universities would close up for three to four months and you would miss so much work, so it just was not worth it," he said. "It was at that moment when I decided to take a chance and look at swimming overseas, and then Pitt came along. You have to do what you have to do in order to get a good education and do what you want."
Like Vorster, football kicker Kirk Christdoulou did not plan on attending a college in the United States. But, after being noticed during an Australian football game, he decided an American education might be in-store for him.
"I was playing in game of Australian Football and a dad of a teammate came up to me after a game I played well in and said 'You remind me exactly of a kid who is now at Penn State, playing in front of 100,000 people' and I was shocked. I thought playing on a stage that big might be cool, so I decided to look into it," he said.
Christdoulou joined ProKick Australia and began focusing on school and training, hoping to pursue his new found dream of playing in the United States. After being accepted to Pitt, Christdoulou arrived on campus in January. He was accompanied by three other early enrollees, helping one another get acclimated to a university lifestyle.
Though Christdoulou's introduction to American football was short, for gymnast Lucy Brett, the sport of gymnastics has been engrained into her day-to-day for more than a decade. A time consuming, investment, gymnastics presents two direct opportunities for athletes in her native England, training for the Olympics or retiring at 16 to focus on school. Brett wanted more, and became one of the first athletes from the Academy of Gymnastics Portishead to earn a scholarship for gymnastics.
While the move to Pittsburgh was planned for many, it was the other end of the country that Nika Markovic thought she would be playing in. With the intent of attending the University of San Francisco up in the air after the departure of their head coach, Markovic made a quick decision to enroll at Pitt, seeing the campus and facilities from pictures and videos and Skype sessions with the coaching staff.
"I believe that everything happens for a reason, and even though I was scared to come here, not knowing anyone, I just felt something inside that this was the right decision and that I was going to like it," she recalled. "Playing volleyball and going to school is very hard in Slovenia because you usually play for a club and go to school separately, they are not connected like they are here. From my freshman year of high school, I knew that I wanted to come to play here."
The need to relocate in order to further develop your talents is a trend Markovic shares with men's basketball freshman Peace Ilegomah, who moved from his native Nigeria in 2015 to pursue a basketball scholarship. The 6-9 center relocated to Stamford, Conn., and attended Trinity Catholic High School, living with a host family before moving to New Jersey to be close to family.
The acclimation from Nigeria to the northeastern portion of the United States wasn't easy for Ilegomah, who had never owned a home computer or eaten a slice of pizza. The translation of many forms of Nigerian English to the American version was also hard for Ilegomah, who was often afraid to speak up.
"I remember that I would not want to speak in class because I didn't want to say a word that means one thing to me and something else in this English," he laughed.
With a diverse student population, both in athletics and the general student body, the University of Pittsburgh continues to welcome those from across the world to Oakland and its branch campuses. Currently enrolling more than 3,150 international students, the university boasts more than 7,800 international alumni. Many of those students have contributed both academically, and athletically, as Pitt is among the leaders in insuring diversity and inclusion, on and off the playing fields.
#H2P | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook
Players Mentioned
AA
/ Women's Gymnastics
P
/ Football
RHP
/ Baseball
C
/ Men's Basketball
RS
/ Volleyball
Guard
/ Women's Basketball
/ Women's Tennis
M
/ Men's Soccer
FLY/FREE/IM
/ Swimming & DivingPitt Athletics | Panthers' Choice Recap
Monday, April 20
Pitt Athletics | The 2026 Panthers' Choice Awards Trailer 🎬
Monday, April 13
Pitt Athletics | Presenting the Victory Heights Arena and Sports Performance Center.
Monday, April 13
Pitt Cheer | Watch the Panther cheer team compete at nationals in Daytona!
Sunday, April 12