International Student-Athletes Have Unique COVID-19 Perspective

Traveling halfway across the world to play college athletics in the United States is an opportunity that's too good to pass up.

That's the common refrain when talking with the nearly two dozen international student-athletes that compete across seven Ball State teams.

Living halfway across the globe during the middle of a pandemic?  That's a different adventure.

"I think I got four flights canceled before I actually got to go home," said Nicky Potts.  The junior midfielder hails from Nuneaton, England and was Ball State soccer's leading scorer this fall.

"I didn't realize I was going to spend seven and a half hours [waiting in O'Hare Airport]."

Potts's decision was made relatively quickly. Because of COVID-19, Ball State announced classes were moving online in an email sent the evening of March 11.  Potts was on a plane just five days later.

"I asked mum and dad if I could go home," Potts said. "They were like 'We'll have to look' because flights to Europe were getting canceled. I was like 'I cannot stay in Muncie by myself.'"

"I can just stay here and live with a friend," freshman field hockey keeper Wietske Overdijkink told her parents, taking a slower initial approach. Businesses in the U.S. hadn't been closed yet. Twelve hours later, however, she was departing for Baambrugge, Netherlands, a suburb of Amsterdam.

COVID-19's outbreak ravaged Europe prior to its full arrival across the Atlantic. After northern areas of Italy had already instituted stay-at-home orders, the entire nation was placed on lockdown March 9, four days before the cancellation of the Mid-American Conference basketball tournaments in Cleveland.

"You're just not really aware of how bad it actually is until … when I came [home] and everything was closed," Overdijkink said.

Everything, including borders. Basketball center Ben Hendriks, an Ontario native, began to worry when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canadians abroad should start heading home.

"My mother tried to drive down and get me and she got sent back across the border," Hendriks said of his mom's quest through Buffalo. "Saying 'I'm going to get my son from college,' they're probably just like 'Get him a flight!'"

So Hendriks, and pretty much only Hendriks by that time, got a flight. He was one of, by his count, four people taking the 90-minute trek north. HIs plane was so empty the near seven-footer laid down across his row and slept until the flight attendant woke him upon arrival.

It was the same experience tennis player Thibault de Negri had en route back to De Haan, Belgium.  de Negri laid down across an empty exit row, usually the most coveted of seats.

Once de Negri arrived home he laid down again, this time in the middle of the street. And no, the junior was never in any danger. De Haan is a coastal town and massive tourist destination during Belgium's two-week Easter (spring) break.

"I took a picture on the coast road which usually is packed with people," de Negri said. "I was just laying down on the street, no cars to see. It was pretty crazy."

de Negri is currently living with his sister, self-quarantining after arriving home and not wanting to contact his grandparents, who live with his family. The arrangement also keeps his sister company while her fiancé is still at sea working on a dredger ship. About three weeks over his shift, nobody is yet allowed on or off the boat because of the virus.

But work schedules aren't the only thing askew. Women's basketball guard Estel Puiggros injured her knee in the team's regular season finale at Western Michigan March 7.  She was scheduled to have surgery in Muncie following the MAC Tournament. That didn't, and still hasn't, happened.

"I came back [to Barcelona], and we know the doctor who is going to do my surgery," Puiggros said. "He's our friend. He said that he's not working right now and he doesn't know when it's going to be possible to have the surgery. The first day that he can have surgery again I'm going to be the first one."

In the meantime, Puiggros is stuck inside just outside one of Europe's most bustling cities.

"It's like a ghost town. It's impressive because I've never seen Barcelona like that," Puiggros said. "We have to go with a paper, your ID, like the police are outside asking where you're going. You have to stay home."

The point guard did get out to see her grandmother, but only from a safe distance, waiving through a doorway.

"I'm not going to touch her," Puiggros said.

It's similar for Potts in Nuneaton, east of Birmingham and two hours northwest of London.  In England, the severity of COVID-19 has been magnified by Prince Charles and Prime Minister Boris Johnson both contracting the virus.

"We get an hourly update of how he is," Potts said of Johnson's condition while he was ill. "Oh it's everywhere – TV, your phone, social media, everywhere. You know how he's doing."

The soccer player is allowed outside once per day and can only drive to the grocery store. That ordinance is police enforced but works truthfully more on an honors system. Potts has yet to be stopped while out.

"No. I think I look too innocent to be like 'they haven't been out more than once,'" Potts said. "It's so weird. So quiet."

The time Potts does spend outside is often running, always crossing the street when she encounters others. She hasn't been able to do much soccer work.

"My garden's not quite big enough to do the technical stuff," Potts said.

Overdijkink, on the other hand, has more than enough space. Everybody in her family plays field hockey. She's the only goalie, and she happens to have a miniature turf field in the yard.

"They all can just shoot at me," Overdijkink said of her family, most of them center backs.

Some of the rest of Overdijkink's time outside has come at work, although not her work. Weets doesn't have a job but showed up to one anyway.

"The people who make the bread," Overdijkink said, "they deliver it and it was very busy and I have a driver's license so I just called them and was like 'Can I help?' Then I delivered bread for a day."

"Can I help?" is the resonating question and one felt across borders.

Potts said medical students in England are graduating early (like in the U.S.) and doctors are coming out of retirement to help the National Health Service. In Canada, Hendriks worries about his mother who works taking care of developmentally handicapped adults and in hospitals.

"She's sort of the front lines right now," Hendriks said. "She doesn't have to wear that whole crazy suit, but it's more like masks, gloves up to the sleeves … I worry not for myself, but more for everyone else."

Sounds familiar to the situation here at home. In ways all of it sounds familiar. Oceans and borders may create boundaries, but in times like this there are far more ties that bind.

International Student-Athletes Have Unique COVID-19 Perspective

Players Mentioned

Thibault de Negri

Ben Hendriks

Wietske Overdijkink

Estel Puiggros

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