This year GHC is the home to eleven international players who maybe be very familiar with their game but are still adjusting to a new country completely. Lucy Threlfall, women’s basketball player, flew over seven hours from the United Kingdom to Georgia with her mom to start her first year at Georgia Highlands.

ShaoTung Lin, another Women’s Basketball player, traveled over 8,000 miles from the state of Taiwan to start her freshman year and said, “The hardest transition is the language barrier, but the technology helps.”

Lin explained that Google assists her when talking to friends and teammates and makes things easier for her. However, Men’s Basketball Coach JJ Merritt said, “Sometimes it is a challenge, if we’re not in a close proximity to one another and I’m yelling across the floor it does get kind of tough.”

Despite the wonders Google can do to fill the language barrier, the ladies on this team all have different challenges to deal with for their first year away from home. Alexandria Shishkina, a Russian freshman Women’s Basketball player, said, “It’s hard to balance school with basketball but the coaches help a lot.”

Merritt added, “Since I’ve been at Georgia Highlands, I’ve coached seven or eight international guys and three of them were all from Canada.”

Cultural diversity is often seen in professional athletic teams, but they all speak the language of their sport.