Story by Olivia Phelps
Vigorous academics. Demanding practices. Overly-salted french fries. Below-zero weather.
“I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” said UC Riverside’s Chris Patton.
Five-hundred and twenty-four foreign men’s basketball players currently play at NCAA Division I schools from 64 different countries. Compared to the 2011-2012 season in which 291 men’s basketball players played at DI schools in the United States, the 2013-2014 season has seen an 80.1 percent increase in the span of two years. Eastern Washington, Maine, New Mexico State and Nicholls State lead the pack with seven international men’s basketball players apiece.
In the 2011-2012 season 10 percent of all men and women’s basketball players were international, just bested by 13 percent of all men and women’s soccer players.
With 232 foreign women’s basketball players at NCAA DI schools this season, the Atlantic 10 Conference houses 20 of those players spread out over its 13 rosters, the most of any NCAA DI conference for women’s hoops.
Compared to the other three conferences of its size, the Big West ranks second for the most international women’s basketball student-athletes just behind the Colonial Athletic Association with 11, followed by the Horizon League with six and the Atlantic Sun Conference with four.
This season, the Big West has 27 foreign players total on its 18 basketball rosters: seven women and 20 men.
Senior men’s basketball forward, Chris Patton, moved from his home in Melbourne, Australia to play at the College of Southern Idaho for the 2010-2011 season with the hopes of playing DI basketball in the States. From there the six-foot-ten Australian transferred to Neosho Community College in Chanute, Kansas, before realizing his dream of playing Division I basketball at UCR.
Having never been to the United States before moving to play and attend school, Patton, like most international student-athletes, had more adjusting to do than the average college freshman.
One of the toughest things to acclimate to, the Aussie notes, was the harsh Midwest winter.
“To see it snowing, and for it to get that cold, it was so different from what I was used to,” recalls Patton. “Where I’m from in the coldest spot in the mountains you can get away with wearing shorts and a light t-shirt. I’ve never had gloves or beanies.”
Even before experiencing the cold, the former player of Australian Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Charles Ryan, Patton remembers his first moments in the US.
“When I first flew into LAX I had McDonald’s and I couldn’t believe how much salt there was on the fries. That was one of the first things, I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of salt’.”
The now senior who is partial to the warm southern California winters he enjoys as a Highlander notes that one of the biggest differences was the intensity of his sport.
In Australia, Patton would practice two or three times a week for two hours at a time back at home.
“Basketball was everyone’s second job, it’s a hobby [in Australia],” said Patton.
Three-hour practices six days a week in addition to games and time in the weight room was an adjustment for the Aussie.
Now, “we have four coaches with a full-time job. They demand so much more.”
As Patton finished high school in Australia in the month of November, the usual time for graduation down under, the soon-to-be community college student had eight months without studies before beginning in Idaho.
“The last time I was home was a year and a half ago. So in the last four years I’ve spent about 4 months in Australia.”
For junior Diane Moore of Hawai‘i who grew up in Japan, missing home wasn’t as much of an issue.
Moore spent part of every summer in California, her father’s home state. Moore was actually born in Oakland, California before her family moved to Japan when she was less than five months old.
The guard originally moved in with her uncle in the golden state after completing high school in Japan to attend Diablo Valley College in California. Without any intention of playing DI basketball or even pursuing basketball after high school, the athlete attended a practice at DVC where the coach asked her why she wasn’t playing. While Moore admittedly missed the sport, she decided to return to the gym.
Two years later, the now Rainbow Wahine moved to Hawai‘i to attend UH, which as Moore points out, is halfway between Japan and California.
“I wasn’t planning on playing basketball when I moved to the states, I really just wanted to see the other side of me, my Dad’s side. I spent my whole life in Japan so I really wanted to see the other side [in California].”
Moore did not mention homesickness as something that she struggled with like Patton, but did name a cultural difference that made things difficult initially.
“How people express themselves,” she explained. “In Japan you tend to keep it to yourself, you don’t really show how you feel, what you’re feeling. But here you have to tell what your thoughts are for other people to understand.”
While Patton and Moore have spent four and three years in the states respectively, Greek, freshman Ioannis Dimakopoulos of UC Irvine doesn’t have as much time in America under his belt.
When asked what one might find in the Greece capitol, where Dimakopoulos played for the Panathinaikos U18 Team that won the 2011 Greek Championship, the first year joked, “My picture everywhere.”
The seven-foot-two forward was born in Patra, Greece to the Greek basketball legend, Dimitris Dimakopoulos.
“I’ve been getting recognized since I was born because my father was a basketball player for one of the best teams.”
“He was playing under-16 as a captain and under-18 as a captain and for the national team in the same summer so there are a lot of people that know my father. There has always been that comparison. I was always the son of my father, so every time I was playing I always had something to prove.”
While Dimakopoulos explains that because Greece is much smaller than the United States, getting recognized in Athens is not like getting recognized in America, he enjoys the anonymity in the States.
“[My father] never played in the states. There’s no pressure here. There’s still some criticizing from back home from newspapers who will throw in some articles, but […] I’m not there anymore, I’m here. The only thing that matters is what I’m doing here.”
Dimakopoulos moved with his family to “the capitol”, as he referred to Athens, when he was 14 years old to pursue his sport.
A normal day would look like: school, returning home for an English tutor, homework or studying, then practice from 9:30 to midnight everyday except Tuesdays when games were held in the gym.
Practices were held in the late hours of the night because of space constrictions.
Dimakopoulos knew he wanted to play in the U.S. and moved to the States to attend a thirteenth year of high school before pursuing collegiate athletics and academics.
“I wanted to do an extra year in high school so I could see how the [referees] call, the differences in the rules like free throws. It’s slightly different. Also, I wanted to see how the professors grade.”
Like the first-year discovered, even basketball is slightly different in America than it is in Greece or Australia and Japan.
While Patton mentioned that the intensity that surrounds athletics is vastly different in the States, Moore also commented on the game’s physicality in addition to a few technical differences like playing quarters in Japan versus halves in collegiate hoops in America.
Deciding to attend an extra year in high school to familiarize himself with academics and basketball while living with a host family helped Dimakopoulos ease right into his first year at UC Irvine. With his teammates as his guides, the Greek athlete is slowly understanding different nuances and culture in southern California.
The Greece native names meal times, fashion, hugging instead of kissing on the cheek as a greeting and different sayings as some of the things he’s had to familiarize himself with.
Where in Greece people say “close the lights”, Dimakopoulos still struggles with saying “turn off the lights”.
UCI redshirt freshman and Turkey native Ege Mala, took Dimakopoulos under his wing to help with small things such as different phrases.
“[Mala] knew that I was going to get picked on for my English and my wrong translations. He told me that he went through that last year and that it’s not a big deal. It also gave me courage because I saw he could stay away from his family so I can do it.”
“[Mala and I would] would have some European type lunches and European type dinners. People here eat lunch around 12 and for us that’s like breakfast. My lunch was at two or three sometimes so dinner would be at 9:30 or 10 on a regular day. So eating dinner at six is so weird for me.”
Ella Clark, a junior at Long Beach State who traveled from London, England to become a 49er was pleasantly surprised by how kind everyone seemed to be in southern California.
Now a starting forward after utilizing a medical redshirt during the 2011-2012 season, Clark uses Skype a to keep in touch with friends and family back home. The sport psychology major began making plans to pursue basketball in the states when she was 15 years old and leaned on her new teammates to help her through the first year.
“The most rewarding part of this experience,” Clark shared, “has been making life-long friends and getting my degree. All while doing it in the beautiful southern California weather.”
While the four have overcome a number of hurdles after moving to the United States, they would do it again in an instant.
Patton explains, “The first year is going to be rough. Just trying to get a life over here. When I was a freshman I felt like my life was still in Australia and that I was temporarily here – that I was going to be here for a short amount of time and then I could go back to my life.”
“I talked to my family a lot [that first year], I was really struggling. But, I just couldn’t believe that there was a chance to play Division I basketball, I knew I had an opportunity.”
When asked what advice Dimakopoulos would give to an international student looking to play basketball in America he responded, “They should. We are a family. The thing I like about my team is that we don’t fight. Everybody [likes] everybody, we’re like a family. That’s how I felt when I came here.”
With nothing more than television shows and movies to inspire fantasies about America, the athletes travel to play.
Seven-hundred and fifty-six foreign basketball players left the safety of home and familiarity for a spot on a DI roster.
Idioms, dimes smaller than nickels, frequent embraces, rigorous schedules…
Dimakopoulos sums it up, “I like it here.”