Coming to America: NIU tennis coach recruits international stars

AURORA – Pawel Poziomski had to make a choice: college or tennis. Otherwise, he would have to leave Poland; because in Poland, the two don’t go hand-in-hand.

So Poziomski, one of Poland’s top juniors and No. 203 in the International Tennis Federation, chose door No. 3. He decided to come to the U.S. and play for one of his Polish national coaches’ friends, first-year Northern Illinois coach Pawel Gajdzik (pronounced PAW-vul GUY-chek), a Poland native himself.

It was near Chicago, home of the second-largest Polish population outside the Polish capital of Warsaw, and Poziomski could study business while continuing his tennis at a high level.

“In Poland, if you want to study, you have to finish with tennis,” Poziomski said. “And, also, there are not as good of coaches in Poland. There are no sponsors and it’s not as good as here.”

While college tennis is certainly an international sport, Gajdzik has taken it to a new level at NIU this season. Of the nine players on NIU's roster, there are eight countries represented.
And from player to player, there are unbelievable stories to be told.

There’s Adnan Sose, a freshman from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, who is just excited to be out on his own for the first time this semester.

There’s Shaun Stewart, a Canadian transplant who transferred from St. Mary’s in San Antonio, Texas, after his own eye-opening experience as a foreigner there.

And there’s Jurica Grubisic (pronounced Yoo-ree Grew-ba-sich), a freshman Baylor transfer from Croatia who came to NIU, knocked off Michigan State top singles player Alex Forger and earned Mid-American Conference Player of the Week honors all before the school even sent out a press release that he had signed with the program.

After Saturday, his record stands at 3-1 at the top singles spot for the Huskies, losing his lone match 6-3, 7-5, to 36th-ranked Marek Michalicka from Wisconsin on a day Grubisic was feeling "flat."
Spain (Javier Bernabe), Peru (Jimmy Chu), Mexico (Alfonso Monroy) and the U.S. (Matt Hansen and Ross VanderPloeg) are also represented on the roster.

“College tennis, in particular, is an international sport because there are only so many college prospects in America each year,” Gajdzik said. “They go to the big schools, the super conferences. But we can get the same caliber of player if we go recruit internationally.”

And Gajdzik has.

In Grubisic, ranked at highest No. 57 in the ITF rankings, he has a player who is ranked much higher than any MAC recruit since 1994, when tennisrecruiting.net started keeping those statistics.
No other MAC team has brought in a player in the top 150 in that time, with Western Michigan's Zeyad Montasser (157) and Pablo Olivarez (197) coming the closest.

To make things better, NIU already has signed Poland’s Szymon Tatarczyk (pronounced Shi-mon Ta-ta-sik), ranked No. 63 by ITF, for next season. He has played doubles with Poziomski for Poland’s national teams for 10 years and they will continue to play together at NIU along with Tatarczyk playing singles, where he is “the same caliber as Jurica,” according to Gajdzik.

“Everyone has their secrets but it’s all about connections,” Gajdzik said. “I have the advantage of being from Europe and playing against a lot of players that were talented. I know coaches, they know who will go out and who wants to continue their education.

“Then you look at the results and try to pick the players that will fit your goal and fit your school.”

The challenge for Gajdzik, who has a Ph.D. in sports psychology, is to help his players adapt to a new country and college tennis while learning to be teammates.

“He’s a lot stricter and the expectations are a lot higher [than former coach Pontus Hiort],” Stewart said. “But he lets you be you.”

Tennis is certainly a nomadic game by nature, playing one weekend in Brussels and the next in Budapest, but it’s still not easy to get acclimated to a completely new culture quickly.

The team takes a van to practice at Aurora’s Vaughan Athletic Center until they can play outside. But when they are away from tennis, they do everything from eating dinner together to playing Winning Eleven and FIFA on Xbox and PlayStation.

“You have so many different personalities and religions,” Gajdzik said. “Maybe it’s not an immediately visible difficulty, but you have to find the right medium with all of these guys. For them to come here and adjust to American culture is kind of like a survey course.

“You have to adjust and, in three weeks you’re in a new school with new coaches. You either float or drown. But I think they’ll be fine.”

One of the most interesting tasks with the language barrier is finding doubles teams and players that can work together.

“Sometimes they just nod and smile and that’s not the answer you’re looking for,” Stewart said. “It’s different, especially on the court in doubles, trying to communicate with each other. I’ll say ‘We’re going to do this play’ and they’ll just look and me and think ‘What?’ ”

Stewart learned about being a foreigner in Texas quickly. His favorite story occurred one day in geography class when he turned to a girl next to him to complain that the only picture of his home country in the book was an igloo.

She didn’t understand what the problem was and asked him “Isn’t that how ya’ll live?”

He then responded, “Yeah, but I live in a three-story igloo. At least show a nice one.”

“[The language barrier is] kind of funny sometimes, it brings more of a comedic side to tennis when you play with these guys with no English and you kind of make fun of each other.”

For Sose, having teammates at all is something new. Is Sarajevo, he didn’t play much doubles.

“I have never played for a team,” he said. “I’ve always played for myself and for my name. I’m getting used to it, playing for a team. I really like it. I feel special, because I’m representing a university and a new country.”

Gajdzik’s challenge at NIU was to create a winner out of a team that’s only seen marginal success in the past. Last year’s MAC MVP, Brian Livingston, transferred to Illinois and the cupboard was left mostly bare outside of Stewart and the 6-foot-3 Hansen with Chu nursing an injury.

So Gajdzik’s trying to duplicate a feat he saw first-hand at Baylor. He entered the school as a player 12 years ago on a team that hadn’t won a conference match in 10 seasons.

And he left as a volunteer assistant last year after the school had won seven Big 12 titles, one NCAA title, an NCAA runner-up and two more NCAA semifinal appearances over the last 11 years.

“We need a better schedule to get there and we hope to change that next year, when we already have eight ranked teams on the schedule,” Gajdzik said. “But we need an indoor facility to host some of those matches eventually.

“Our goal is to make the NCAA Tournament this year and I think we have a pretty good shot by the time the conference tournament comes around. It will probably take two or three days to decide who gets the automatic bid.”

Between now and then, it will be up to Gajdzik to help his new team improve. But his players have confidence they will get it done.

“I can tell him stuff that I couldn’t tell to my former coach,” Grubisic said. “He understands a lot. I think he’s gonna make this team very good.”