As hard as 2020 was on everyone, for foreign athletes aspiring to become freshmen at U.S. colleges, the hurdles multiplied.
Aleks Hristov lived that. A discus thrower and shot putter from Karnobat, Bulgaria, his inability to compete in significant meets last year was a major reason UTEP was one of his few college offers and why the Miners were able to land a diamond-in-the-rough who qualified for the NCAA Championships in the discus as a freshman.
His path from Karnobat, a small town about halfway between Bucharest, Romania and Istanbul, Turkey, to El Paso, though, was just getting started when he received a scholarship offer he wanted to take.