At the west end of Ball State field hockey’s pitch at Briner Sports Complex, seven flags wave lightly in the wind. One is on a tall pole — the American flag. Six others are zip-tied to a black fence, all in a row.
South Africa, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands are represented along that fence.
Sometimes, the flags are taken down when the Cardinals don’t play in Muncie for an extended period. Yet a personal connection is made each time field hockey’s nine international players see their country’s flag flying just as the United States does at every Ball State event.
“That gesture makes you feel seen and known,” Paloma Gómez Rengifo said. “Sometimes, if we don't have it, it makes you a little bit upset. Even though it's just a flag, it has a lot of meaning.”
Rengifo, a graduate student from Madrid, Spain, remembered watching American-made movies and television shows as a child, sparking a dream to experience the same things she saw on screen.
She soon realized the only way she would be able to attend university in the United States was through field hockey due to the financial differences in overseas tuition compared to in-country tuition.
The same was true for the eight other international Cardinals.
“You're like, ‘I want to experience prom and the football game and cheerleading. Even yellow school buses,’” Rengifo said. “When I first got here, I thought they were just in the movies, so I was taking pictures of the buses. I was like, ‘Oh my God, they're real.’”
Four years later, Rengifo has helped her foreign teammates, such as Emma van Hal, a junior from Wageningen, Netherlands, find comfort in Muncie by drawing on her own experiences. Van Hal dons the red and white along with two other Dutch natives on the team, freshman Cleo van Roessel and sophomore Nadine Loeps.
Van Hal said when she first enrolled at Ball State, she was not only scared to make mistakes on the field, but she was scared to make mistakes off it, particularly when speaking non-native English nearly full time.
“I remember my dad being like, ‘Emma, you're gonna be in a new world where you can literally be anyone you want to be,’” van Hal said. “But I was so shy. I remember meeting all my teammates, and I didn't give them a hug, I was too scared to say hi.”
Like Rengifo, Carolina Schmidt, a freshman from Teltow, Germany, has dreamt of moving to the United States since her youth. And like van Hal, Schmidt worried about being more than 4,000 miles away from everything she previously knew.
But head coach Caitlin Walsh eased any potential nerves Schmidt had about moving to America when she told her during the recruiting process that the Cardinals would soon become her home away from home. Even in her short four months out of Germany, that promise has started to come true.
“Being so far away from home, I need people around me who are like a second family,” Schmidt said. “… The first weeks were hard, but I think I’m getting used to it now.”
So too has Lauren Lewis, a freshman from Hull, England, who is the only Cardinal from the United Kingdom. Like Rengifo and Schmidt, she is the only member of the field hockey program since at least 2006 to represent her home country.
She had never even been to the United States before being accepted to Ball State. But her decision was a no-brainer.
“I never thought I'd be able to do it. It was always kind of a fever dream type thing,” Lewis said.
It’s not just the international players who left their distinct homes in pursuit of a childhood dream. None of the Cardinals are from Indiana, and field hockey is the only team at Ball State in which that is the case. Its seven countries are tied with men’s volleyball for the most represented by a single team on campus.
All nine foreign athletes only go home over summer break and for holidays. The same is true of Nadia Briddell, a senior from Baltimore. Though she competes more than 500 miles away from her hometown, Briddell is one of 13 Cardinals who did not have to leave their home country to accomplish their dreams.
“It really makes a statement that people will come wherever to play,” Briddell said. “If they want to play, it doesn't really matter how far it is from home.”
However, Briddell is familiar with feeling like a stranger in your own space of living.
She attended a primarily white, private high school in Baltimore, and even after four years in Muncie, Briddell still understands the lack of non-white representation in field hockey.
That’s why she has joined Ball State’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council and became the president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She wants to use her positive experiences as a Black Ball State athlete to help other aspiring Black field hockey players understand that Muncie is a welcoming community for them to join.
“I wanted something different,” Briddell said. “When I came here, there was always someone that looked like me … I'm always the minority. I'm not ashamed of it. It's not something that should be an elephant in the room.”
Despite being the only Canadian in the field hockey program, Grace Clokie, a junior from West Vancouver, likely feels more at home in America than any of her international teammates.
Growing up less than an hour from the United States border, Clokie remembered taking vacations to Washington and California as a child. However, she had never been to the Midwest before moving to Muncie.
“When I first came here, I was kind of taken aback,” Clokie said. “… I remember we would go to Pennsylvania for some games and I was like, ‘Oh, there's hills here!’”
When Michaela Graney, one of two South African field hockey athletes alongside junior Jessica Rochat, travels back to her home country for summer or winter break, her trip consists of more than one travel day. The Cape Town native said her excursions back to South Africa take approximately 40 hours.
“It’s always comforting going home, but it's so sad this year,” Graney said. “… I know that I'm not coming back. It’s kind of scary because I've made a home here too.”
Her first year in Muncie began about as unceremoniously as it could have.
Graney likes to think of herself as personable and confident, but she admitted how difficult it was to be herself during the first semester of college in a new country. Then, COVID-19 hit, and her situation got even worse.
Every other international player on the team was able to return to their home countries except for Graney. Instead, she had to live in the United States for three months with a South African family she was initially mostly unfamiliar with in the Carolinas.
“It was quite intense,” Graney said. “I kind of forgot about it, because I’ve been here for so long. It was kind of traumatic.”
What has most directly helped Rengifo and Graney through their five years in Muncie are the three other fifth-year seniors still suiting up for the Cardinals. Most everything the two of them have gone through, the others have as well. Not only do they call each other best friends, they call each other sisters.
“It hasn’t been the easiest road, but here we are,” Rengifo said. “… We've talked about our weddings, our kids in the future and visiting each other. It’s hard that your best friends are from all over the world … but I feel like we made friendships for life.”
Despite Graney and Rengifo fully intending to return to their home countries after their time in Muncie ends, the five fifth-years have come up with a plan to stay in touch besides consistent electronic communication.
“Every five years, we're gonna meet somewhere,” Graney said. “One time, they're gonna come to South Africa; and in five years’ time I'm gonna go to the U.S.; and in another five years' time, we’ll go to Spain.”
Contact Kyle Smedley via email at kmsmedley213@gmail.com or via X @KyleSmedley_.
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