Exchange Student Jumps Into Cardinal Sports

    She was in a completely new school and country. She hadn’t played sports for three years. She hadn’t even heard of softball before coming to the United States. But none of this stopped Karin Yajima, a Japanese foreign exchange student, from being a three-sport athlete during her time at Lincoln.
    As fall rolled around and Yajima looked for activities to do, she tried out for soccer. Stepping onto the blistering field for the beginning of tryouts, she touched the ball for the first time in six years. Nevertheless she made the junior varsity team and played the rest of the season. When soccer ended, then came basketball, and Yajima played for the first time in three years, again making JV squad. For her spring endeavors, Yajima tried softball for the first time in her life and made the varsity team.
    She was having the time of her life.
    “I loved every sport I played,” Yajima said. “The coaches and teammates were all so nice and talented.” Yajima played all of these sports while spending a year learning in her second language and engaging in the “American experience.” She went to football games, school assemblies, and even prom with her fellow exchange students, and the process of being on a team helped her along the way.
    “It was nice being on such welcoming teams,” Yajima said. “They helped me get used to the school.” As her time here dwindles down to less than a month, she recalls all of her good times in Portland eating greasy American food, making friends, and competing in school sports. Given time to reflect with the first sport break since a two-week span between soccer and basketball season, she doesn’t regret one second of it. Although incredibly busy, “I did all those sports because I wanted to be active,” she said. “It’s better than going home and doing nothing.”
    Upon returning to Japan, Yajima will finish her senior year and attend the college that is an extension of her high school – but she is not quite done with the United States yet. Yajima hopes to return and finish her studies in California and plans on visiting state schools there during the summer. “I can’t believe my time is almost up,” she said. “I really look forward to coming back.”