Aftershock

The Vulcan’s soccer teams show us why diversity is important

Staff Writer Nick Wagner
Photos Courtesy of Samantha Devivo and the Hilo Athletics Department

After Shock word mark When attending a soccer game at the university’s baseball stadium, you can see a variety of different nationalities representing the Vulcans. With nine players representing eight different countries, it is easy to see how UH Hilo is near the top rankings of diversity nationally.

Seeing that soccer is the international sport of choice, you can almost guarantee a couple out-of-country players to be on any team. Gene Okamura, the coach of the women’s team, mentions that the Vulcan’s have an edge when recruiting. The location is Hawaii, and the community surrounding the college is supportive, which makes recruiting international players much easier for Coach Okamura and the Vulcan’s soccer teams.

The players bring a more professional and passionate mindset for the game given that the sport is taken much more seriously abroad than in America. International or not, Vulcan coaches look for the same thing in every player: someone with good character, and talent on the field. For a University player, these characteristics are almost necessary, but combined with different personalities from all over the world you find that no matter where the player came from they’re learning so much more because of the diversity shown within the squad. Coach Paul Regrutto of the men’s squad goes even goes as far to say that even his coaching techniques change and improve all of the time as he learns from his international players.

Coach Regrutto states as well that often times he wonders how scary it would be for a younger him to go to a completely different place and be immersed in a culture that is completely unknown to him. He emphasizes that the “Aloha” spirit of the big island can be a lot more welcoming than that of other Universities or cities around America.Coach Regrutto goes onto say,

One of the hardest things to do now is to truly be yourself as a human being, and you want your kids to be empathetic, understanding, and appreciative of all people. It doesn’t matter whether they’re a soccer player or not.”

The “Aloha” spirit of our community is an influence not only on our university but also on our Vulcan athletic teams as well. Who have shown us throughout the season that no matter how different we are as people we can still work together as one.

The traditional style of the Big Island and the welcoming culture that the community of Hilo provided a more comfortable environment for the international players.Paired with the university’s emphasis on diversity at the campus it seems like a perfect place for an international student to come to.

Men's Soccer team When looking through our University of Hilo’s (UH Hilo) academic website you can find that international students have a couple more hoops to jump through than any normal student as they must show their proficiency in english. Even in this case the university has been able to accommodate international students more by creating more scholarships for them. When comparing our scholarship opportunities to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) you see that Hilo offers around 14 different kinds of scholarships for international students while UCLA does not offer scholarships to international undergraduate students. These are the many reasons why Hilo is able to sustain such a great reputation of diversity on campus.

The players show their diversity through many forms, on and off the field. The team embraces their experiences at Hilo by supporting each other and showing up to Vulcan Volleyball games and supporting other students around our campus.