International students make up just seven percent of the campus population, yet for the women’s tennis team international students are the majority. In fact every single tennis player is an international student and the team comes solely from two continents: Asia and Europe.

For Head Coach Lisa Hart the recruiting process requires a lot of time and energy to weed out the potential student-athletes.

“We spend a couple of hours a day as a staff on recruiting,” Hart said.

This includes watching videos of the athletes sent to the coaching staff and the coaching staff deciding whether the player should be pursued. If the player is what the coaching staff is looking for, the process begins.

“It usually starts with an email, we then send them fliers and brochures and then we set up a Skype call where Robin and I will sit down and Skype with them. Then we let them take all the information and think of some questions and then Skype them again. After that we usually try to get them to plan a trip [to Pullman] or we plan a trip to them. If they’re still unsure I will do a final home visit and try to get the answer we want.”

Senior Lize Leenknecht was one of the players Hart was interested in. Leenknecht quickly found out how dedicated Hart was to her team.

“I was about to sign with another school and then Lisa all of a sudden emailed me and she’s like ‘can I come meet you in two days?’ and she came to Belgium,” Leenknecht said. “From the first time I met her I felt a really good connection and then I saw pictures of the campus and the team and the team contacted me as well. I felt like this was a good place to go.”

Freshman Aneta Miksovska echoed Leenknecht’s sentiments toward Hart saying that Hart did what no other coaches would do for Miksovska.

“Lisa came to see me personally, which was a big thing for me. No other coach wanted to come to Europe to see me. I met her and thought she was a great person, so I chose WSU.”

For many international tennis players there are not many other options. To continue playing tennis is expensive and it is hard to find places in Europe that are able to rival American schools’ offers of getting an education and continuing to play tennis. Most times people have to choose education or tennis.

Senior Trang Huynh said that her alternative was different to her European teammates.

“My family was planning to move to America and I was planning on going to any college and figure out a way to play.”

With so many tennis players in the world it is hard for players to get the chance to play at the collegiate level.

“It’s tough, there are 320 Division-I schools in women’s tennis so there is a lot of competition out there,” Hart said. “We just had a player on campus and it was down to us and three other schools so she went on visits to four schools and she didn’t choose us. Usually when they come to campus they fall in love with Pullman and our team.”

With eight players receiving scholarships on each Division-I school, only 2,560 players around the world play at the top level. Subtract that number from the roughly 50 emails a day that are being sent out to just WSU from international players and you have a small percentage of players being able to carry out their dreams.

“Tennis is the most popular sport for females in the world. We always start with the United States kids first and then we look to the other countries. There are so many players in the other countries,” Hart said. “There are more international players, they’re deeper. The No. 60 American player couldn’t make our lineup a couple of years ago. There are only 30 that are at the Pac-12 level and a lot of the Americans want the warm weather and some things that we can’t offer.”

Hart also commented on another difference between international players and American players: how much the players need this opportunity.

“The international kids are very appreciative of everything they get and this is like their family away from home. Nobody has family here so I think our team is a lot closer because this is what they have, this is why they’re here. The international kids need this, this is how they’re paying for school. It’s not like they want to be here, they need to be here to get through.”