East Carolina athletics has many international student athletes, many of whom face challenges while adjusting to American lifestyle.
Challenges can include language barriers, role differences, and maintaining their own culture. These challenges go hand and hand with the normal challenges that a non-international student athlete faces such as homesickness, maintaining grades and being competitive.
Jorge Montes and Pol Solanelles, juniors on the East Carolina’s men’s cross-country team, deal with these obstacles every day.
Montes came to ECU from his hometown in Tijuana, Mexico, in the fall of 2014. Montes said one of the biggest challenges he faced coming in was the adjustment to the language.