Students from all over the world participated in ASU’s own version of the Olympics this weekend, hosted by the Coalition of International Students.
About 140 students participated in the event’s games including ping pong, soccer, racquetball, basketball, beach volleyball, badminton, tennis and flag football.
The event was started in hopes of helping international students become more integrated at the University, CIS president Fabian Lenero said. Coalition members and an adviser planned the event over the past few months.
Lenero, a supply chain management and Chinese sophomore, said CIS holds multiple cultural events and wanted to try something new by hosting a sporting event.
“Most students don’t know the rules of American football until they play it,” Lenero said.
Students registered online for the event and paid $1 per game.
The students who participated in the event got a free ASU Olympics T-shirt with “We are One” printed below the famous Olympics symbol.
The ASU Olympics kicked off Friday at 5 p.m. with flag football and ping pong.
ASU Club Ping Pong, which co-hosted the weekend’s events, helped run the ping pong event and supplied the equipment. About 20 of the club’s 40 members participated.
President of ASU Club Ping Pong Edwin Lam, a finance freshman, said there were about 50 students who participated in more than 60 games.
“The entire tournament took about five hours,” Lam said. “Everyone got along and there was talking most of the time.”
Saturday’s event started at 1 p.m. with soccer, tennis and badminton.
Coalition adviser Manju Ramadurai said the goal was to help ASU’s international students to come together and compete in sports.
“The events seek to enhance cross-cultural awareness and understanding of international sports. This also serves as an excellent opportunity for CIS to collaborate with other international student organizations at ASU and invite other international clubs to join the Coalition,” Ramaduarai said.
There were six soccer teams and six students playing on the badminton and tennis courts.
On Sunday, the weekend ended with basketball, racquetball and beach volleyball from 1 to 5 p.m.
Arvind Ramachander, a computer science graduate student, has attended the event for the past two years. Last year, he won a second-place medal in racquetball but played beach volleyball instead this year.
“The best part about all this is it encourages students out of their academic life to take part in sports,” Ramachander said.
Lina Bearat, event coordinator for the coalition and a civil engineering sophomore, participated in the badminton event.
“It’s going good. I met a bunch of new people,” Bearat said. “I met this girl … in the Italian Club and met this guy from Peru.”
The coalition will have an Olympics award party this upcoming weekend for all the students who participated, and give awards to first, second and third place winners in each sport.
Reach the reporter at mpareval@asu.edu
