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MANSFIELD — There are times when Jacob Perl might benefit from a translator, but Mansfield Senior’s swim coach wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Tygers are a team of many nationalities.
Senior High’s 20-person swimming and diving team features five foreign exchange students. Perl has welcomed to the pool swimmers from Spain, Vietnam and South Korea this winter, along with a sixth new arrival who was born in Guam and grew up in southern California before relocating to Mansfield.
“We have six kids who are completely new to the district and the five foreign exchange kids, most of them have never swam or dove competitively before,” Perl said. “We’ve had foreign exchange students in the past, so in that regard it’s nothing new for the swim program. It’s just the number of kids we have this year is something I don’t think we’ve ever seen before. Twenty-five percent of our team is foreign exchange students.
“Seeing those kids adapt and grow and learn to compete has been really fun to watch.”
Rodrigo Ortiz Garcia, Afra Tarradas and Miguel Rebola-Iranzo all arrived in Mansfield from Spain. Linh Nguyen is from Vietnam, while Junmin Oh is from South Korea. Kai Quintanilla is originally from Guam but lived in San Francisco and San Diego before his family moved to Mansfield.
“Coming from San Diego and growing up with such diversity, this isn’t much of a culture shock to me, especially with all colors and races and knowing all types of different people,” said Quintanilla, who finished seventh in the boys 1-meter diving competition at the Ohio Cardinal Conference meet last month. “One thing that I have noticed is the accents. Some kids have thicker accents.”
There were times early in the season when communication could be difficult, Perl said. Those language barriers have largely receded.
“Again, most of these kids have never swam competitively, so at the beginning of the season it was sometimes challenging to communicate when we were introducing swimming terms that they weren’t familiar with,” Perl said. “We would say something and they would say, ‘I don’t know what this means.’
“As we’ve progressed through the season, they’ve become more familiar with our vocabulary.”
High school sports in America function differently than they do in other countries. Several of Senior High’s foreign exchange students didn’t have the opportunity to compete through their home schools.
“We don’t have sports in our high school,” said Tarradas, who competed in the girls 1-meter diving competition and swam a leg of the 400-yard freestyle relay at the OCC meet. “Sometimes in physical education class we will go swimming but we don’t have competition sports.”
If they want to pursue competitive athletics at home, they have to look outside of their high school.
“In Spain, if you want to practice a sport you go to a club outside of the school,” said Ortiz Garcia, who swims both the freestyle and the breaststroke. “I like this better because you swim with the same people you go to school with.”
Anyone who has traveled abroad alone knows that leaving behind family and friends and flying halfway around the world can be unnerving. It’s not something all 18-year-olds are cut out for.
“In Spain I was used to one kind of culture, not as many as you can find here,” Tarradas said. “It’s been great to meet other people and see how their cultures work.”
Having each other to lean on has helped ease anxieties for Mansfield Senior’s foreign exchange crew — a good host family helps, too.
“It was kind of scary at first,” said Nguyen, who swam in the girls 50 and 100 freestyle events at the OCC meet. “We have great host families here and new friends and we have each other.”
Immersing in another culture is something Senior High’s foreign exchange students will recommend to their friends once they return home.
“At least once in your life I think you should go to another country and learn another culture,” Tarradas said. “It’s very fun and very exciting.”