{"id":90,"date":"2018-09-06T10:14:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T17:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/?p=999917552"},"modified":"2018-09-06T10:14:42","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T17:14:42","slug":"long-beach-state-volleyball-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/long-beach-state-volleyball-china","title":{"rendered":"Meet Yizhi Xue, Long Beach State’s first volleyball player from China in a decade"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are over 460,000 athletes competing in the NCAA this year, and that group gets more international every year. In 2017-18 there were over 17,000 student-athletes from other countries competing for an American college, with some countries more represented than others.<\/p>\n

Despite a population of more than 1.3 billion people, China has only 44 athletes competing in the NCAA this year. One of them is Yizhi Xue, who goes by \u201cEri\u201d among her teammates and coaches. Xue, a native of Nanjing, China, is a middle blocker for the Long Beach State women\u2019s volleyball team, its first player from China in a decade.<\/p>\n

In the last three years Xue has gone from a shy newcomer to a fully integrated part of the Long Beach culture\u2014but the road wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

Arriving<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no easy way to get from China to America as a youth athlete, although there\u2019s plenty of incentive to try. Because there\u2019s no equivalent to the NCAA in China, there\u2019s no combined educational and athletic experience there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to come here because I can study and get an education and play volleyball at the same time,\u201d said Xue. \u201cIn China, I can only go to the pro team.\u201d<\/p>\n

A pro team right out of preparatory school means seven to eight hours of practice a day in addition to a grueling game schedule. It means total dedication to a sport.<\/p>\n

For Xue\u2019s parents, Gang and Yan, that made America an attractive option for their daughter. Because of their positions\u2014her father is the head of the Chinese national beach volleyball program and her mother works in the Chinese government\u2014Xue\u2019s parents had the connections needed to get her to America. But it still wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

Erika Dillard, a former Long Beach State assistant who now coaches at Oregon, ran point on Xue\u2019s recruitment and admission process. She helped former head coach Brian Gimmillaro bring players to Long Beach from all over the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very different recruiting a kid like Eri because in China, the government controls all the social media,\u201d said Dillard. \u201cYou can\u2019t Facebook message a kid, they can\u2019t go onto the NCAA website because it\u2019s blocked. That means they can\u2019t fill out their paperwork, and they have to keep changing email addresses because every time someone finds them they get blocked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dillard was printing NCAA eligibility PDFs and mailing them to China to be filled out. The admissions process wasn\u2019t much easier. In China, the equivalent of high school transcripts weren\u2019t maintained digitally, but rather printed in a booklet which included an embossed crest and a wax seal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re beautiful, and they only make one of them,\u201d said Dillard. \u201cSo they mailed it to the NCAA\u2014well, the NCAA shreds everything they get when they\u2019re done with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That means Xue was trying to get into Long Beach State with no formal records of her education. The family had to pay to have another one made and then overnight it to America just in time for Xue to be admitted to the university.<\/p>\n

Adapting<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, getting from China to America and being admitted to Long Beach State was one thing. Learning to adapt to a new country and a new culture was a completely different set of problems.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Yizhi Xue, a native of Nanjing, China, is a middle blocker for the Long Beach State women\u2019s volleyball team, its first player from China in a decade. Courtesy photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen I first got here, I was really shy, I was really quiet,\u201d remembers Xue. \u201cPeople would ask me questions and I don\u2019t know how to answer. Now after two years it\u2019s better and better.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the team would eat out, Xue had one order: Chicken. It was the only food she recognized and the only word she was confident in pronouncing in front of her new friends and teammates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018Kid, you\u2019re eating a ton of chicken,\u2019\u201d said Dillard. \u201cPretty soon she was going and crushing In-n-Out, she got there pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xue picked up English fast as well. Her experience learning the language in China was entirely from reading and writing, and having teammates around to help her practice speaking accelerated the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cI only learned in China from quiz,\u201d said Xue. \u201cThe best way to learn is from talking, so my teammates made it easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon she was able to share parts of her culture with her new family as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe celebrate Chinese New Year with her,\u201d said Long Beach State head coach Joy McKienzie-Fuerbringer. \u201cIt\u2019s nice that she can share her culture with us as we share ours with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thriving<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now when you see Xue, she\u2019s not the shy player in the corner at team meetings. She\u2019s the confident student with a hand raised in one of her international business classes, or visiting Disneyland with teammate Hailey Harward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe go whenever we get a free day,\u201d says Harward. \u201cWe love doing Guardians of the Galaxy, that\u2019s our favorite ride, and we always get ice cream.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xue has also adjusted wonderfully to the American style of volleyball, which features a lot more talking on the court and requires her to make certain verbal reads as the middle blocker.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re starting to see what she can do this year,\u201d said McKienzie-Fuerbringer. \u201cShe really hit the weight room, she still has a lot of room to grow as she gets stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her growth has been obvious as she went from the conference\u2019s All-Freshman team two years ago to All-Big West last season as a sophomore. This season she\u2019s taken a big jump and leads the team in hitting percentage and blocks. She got a glimpse of her future last week when the 49ers hosted a professional team from Shanghai in an exhibition match. The team is not only a professional team but features a pair of Olympians, as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really excited to get to see them and talk to them,\u201d said Xue. \u201cThey\u2019re very famous in China, everyone knows them there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xue will graduate after next season with her degree in international business, and will have a wide open future in front of her. That could feature splitting time between America and China, it could feature a professional contract in Europe, or returning to her home country to play and train full time as a professional and future Olympian. Right now, she\u2019s happy to be a part of Long Beach\u2019s community as both a student and an athlete.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why I came here,\u201d she says. \u201cI can have both ways, to go after everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last three years Xue has gone from a shy newcomer to a fully integrated part of the Long Beach culture\u2014but the road wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":16440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-the562","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}