People of all races, colors, religions, and backgrounds walk through the campus to class every day. What is less known though is the diversity of our athletic program, and the number of international athletes in it.
Athletes come from all over the world, with at least one person hailing from every habitable continent except Africa. Even with the lack of hometown Africans, there are Africans apart of the athletic program. Two men’s soccer players, Rashid Alarape and Junior Akande, are Nigerian. Akande was born in Liverpool, England making him one of the international athletes at Georgia State. Alarape is from Georgia, but his parents were born in Nigeria, which gave him the opportunity to train with the Nigerian Olympic team, something that made his family euphoric.
“My parents were very proud,” Alarape said. “It was a big deal for both of them, especially my dad. He used to play soccer when he was a youth international.”
Outside the United States, soccer is the most popular sport in the world, so it is no surprise that the Georgia State team with the most international athletes is the men’s soccer team. They have a total of 13 players from outside the US with athletes coming from England, Germany, Lebanon, and Jamaica. England is represented the most with nine out of the 13 hailing from there, including midfielder Max Hemmings who feels Georgia State is now a home away from home.
“All the coaching staff and all the people here make you feel at home and get you comfortable; it’s a great place to be.”
For Hemmings, it was an easy transition moving not only countries but also continents, but he explained coming to Georgia State was the reason it was easy.
“I think it’s made easy coming to a place like this,” Hemmings said. “The people behind me, the ones backing me, made it very easy.”
So why is Georgia State so appealing? Why out of all the schools in America are so many international student-athletes coming to Georgia State? Georgia State associate athletic director Mike Holmes weighed in on what that might be.
“If you ask a lot of these student-athletes, I think most of them will tell you that the appeal of Georgia State is that Atlanta is known internationally,” Holmes said.
Being in Atlanta, Georgia State also offers a lot of things many other larger institutions can not.
“When these athletes are living in Europe or South Korea, they look at Atlanta, and the first thing they see is a major international airport so that they can get in and out easy,” Holmes explained. “Also Atlanta as a city has a name recognition that schools like UGA in Athens or University of Auburn in Auburn, Alabama do not. It ends up being a very major recruiting tool, that and our diversity.”
Georgia State’s diversity is another major attraction for these international student athletes. The fact that they can leave their country and meet and see people just like them is a major plus. Senior Jooeun Bae is from South Korea. She plays on the women’s golf team and the diversity of Georgia State helped her fall in love with Atlanta.
“The greatest thing about being in Atlanta is the fact that it’s really diverse and in South Korea, it isn’t diverse at all,” Bae said.
On the women’s golf team, six out of the eight golfers are from overseas while the tennis team is the only all international roster in the entire athletic program. Head coach of the women’s golf team Cathy Mant shed some light on the recruiting process and how they find players to bring to Georgia State.
“I go overseas to look at prospective student-athletes once a summer. It is a unique process because most of the time I only get to see these players once, and off that one visit I have to decide if they are good enough to play at a D-I level,” Mant explained. “It is a unique process, but one I truly enjoy.”
Fans of Georgia State have good reason to enjoy the athletes that come here as well. A lot of these internationals have gone on to become great names in our athletic program like JJ Grey from England, who graduated last year.
“JJ Grey is arguably one of our top two or three golfers of all time,” Holmes said. “He was an All-American and won four tournaments while here, the whole nine yards.”
Jooeun Bae summed up her experience as an international student-athlete the best as her final year at Georgia State draws to a close.
“There isn’t anything I don’t like about here; I just love Atlanta.”
