What you need to know about playing sports

A vast majority of exchange students play a sport, and are interested in continuing that sport or picking up a new one while they are in the U.S. However, exchange organizations cannot guarantee students that they will be able to play in the U.S. In some states, exchange students cannot play at all. In others, there are restrictions, regulations and “red tape” the student must get through to play. And yet in others there are no restrictions at all. There are also national, State Department rules regarding students who are sporty, their host families and why they are coming to America.

In general, as an exchange student, you should not pin all your hopes and dreams of a successful year on playing a specific sport. You may end up disappointed, or in some cases, students don’t want to come at all once they learn they won’t be able to play soccer or baseball or what have you. The exchange experience and a year in America is worth so much more than playing a sport.

Some states do not permit certain kinds of exchange students to play sports

State Department regulations

In response to some abuses of J1 visas many years ago, the State Department restricts students coming to the U.S. solely to play sports. Basically, if you’ve been recruited to an exchange program for the sole reason of playing a sport at a school, or living with a coach, you cannot do so. A school or coach or sports association may not pay your program fee in order to get you to the U.S. What happened in the past as coaches would bring dozens of students from certain countries — Swedes, Danes, Germans to play soccer/hockey, etc. — house them in unsafe and unsatisfactory situations (such as 10 students sleeping on cots in a basement), and have them as “ringers” on teams.

For this reason also — the ringer one — if you are a high school sport coach, you cannot host a student who plays or has an interest in the same sport as you coach. A  lot of potential host families are upset by this, because, understandably, if it’s someone’s job to work in a sport, that sport is something important to the family that they would want to share with a student. Regardless, this State Department policy is not flexible.

State Sport regulations — who can and cannot play

Many states, including Kentucky and Indiana (to name a few), have extensive regulations on exchange students playing sports in high school. This is because in these states high school sports are taken very seriously, and they want to control abuses of exchange student students and their potential talents. Be aware that in many states, the following types of students cannot play sports:

• those who have “graduated” from secondary school in their home country
• those who are pre-placements (aka: they knew their host family before coming to the U.S.)
• students living with local coordinators
• students who are over the age of 18

In many of these states, the exchange students who want to play must submit paperwork — and a letter from their exchange organization — proving that they were not recruited to play sports, their parents paid their program fee, and they are not in violation of regulations.

You may make the football team, but might not get to play

When you can play… you may not get to play

The most common sport dream of students is to join their high school American football team. This is the quintessential sport (despite the national past time being baseball) that you see featured in feel-good movies & TV shows about high school and college. When the downtrodden team triumphs against adversity, they’re usually a football team.

Many exchange students dream of playing American football. They couple these dreams with those of living in big cities, or by the beach, or in a “sexy” state like California or Florida. The funny thing is, the students who live the “American dream” and have the rare but oft publicized experience of becoming the high school quarterback or making the winning touchdown generally go to small schools in the middle of nowhere. Why? Because it’s only in small towns or schools with not particularly good teams where an exchange student who has never played football before can try out, get on the team and get a starring position.

Big schools or those where the team has won many championships just isn’t going to have space on the field or the team for a stranger who doesn’t know anything about the game. American students also dream of playing high school football, and have practiced for many years to get good enough to “make the team.” So keep your expectations realistic: you may “make the team,” because your school is nice, but you might never play in a game. This is fine, too, you still get to feel like you’re part of the team, make those friends and go on trips to away games, but you’re not going to be the star of the movie. Other students do get lucky and have that experience, but it’s rare.

Your favorite sport may not be played where you are living

The popularity of certain sports, especially those that are season-dependent or more obscure in the U.S., will differ depending on where you are living. So let’s say rugby is a really important part of your life, and you indicate on your application that you MUST continue to play rugby during your exchange year. This is going to severely limit where you can live because, frankly, almost no one in the U.S. knows what rugby is, let alone plays it. The few places that do either a) don’t have schools that will accept students (in urban, wealthy areas) or b) the families in the area simply are not interesting in hosting.

Here are some sports that may be difficult to play in the U.S., or that not all schools will have:

• rugby
• crew/rowing
• handball
• soccer/football
• swimming
• skiing/ski-jumping
• snowboarding
• gymnastics
• netball

And here are sports that many American schools/regions WILL have, that not a lot of exchange students know how to play (but families want):

• baseball
• basketball
• American football
• track & field
• softball
• cheerleading
• volleyball

There need to be some compromises on both ends, obviously, but I can’t tell you how many times a student has REFUSED to go to a host family/continue their exchange because they couldn’t play their obscure/culturally specific sport (usually rugby or crew) or a host family refused to host until they found the “perfect” student who was already an expert baseball or American football player.

I want your sport dreams to come true, I do. I cannot tell you how proud I was anytime a student I worked with became the star player on his/her team, or a “perfect match” was made because of a sport interest. It’s a nice feeling. But I want you to keep open-minded about the whole thing. Your “perfect family” may live in a state where you can’t play sports, or in a school district that doesn’t have your favorite sport. Take a deep breath, calm down and stay positive — you’ll have a great time, regardless. I promise!