Contact: Emily Zadny, Sports Information Graduate Assistant, 630-637-5302
(Written by Julie Laugel, Student Sports Information Assistant)

Apr. 17, 2018 - Traveling to North Central College all the way from Chiba, Japan, a town located 40 minutes from Tokyo, sophomore men's golf student athlete Hiromitsu Washizu faced even more changes in his transition to college than the average student.  

Having only been to the United States to visit California, Washizu made the decision to study abroad in hopes to improve his English while also earning a degree. "I wanted to study finance here and hopefully improve my English skills too. I was already learning English in Japan for about six years before I came here, but we only learn grammar and reading so we are not very good at speaking and listening," he said. Washizu has found his place as a finance, economics, and accounting triple major.  

To help narrow down his decision on which college to attend in the United States, a program in Japan provided Washizu with options that they thought would be a good fit. "There's a program in Japan that chose 30 schools which provide us financial aid and then I choose one of them. They are all liberal arts colleges, so they were all kind of small schools, but I preferred the small schools because I didn't think I could catch up to classes as easily in a big school," Washizu said.  

After making the decision to come to North Central, Washizu knew that he also wanted to play a sport. Growing up, Washizu swam and played baseball along with playing golf. He was introduced to golf while playing recreationally on vacation with his family. "I just hit balls a few times on the golf course and I enjoyed it a lot, so I think that's why I started playing golf competitively," Washizu admitted.  

After playing golf competitively in Japan until he was 12 years old, Washizu took a break from the golf course and focused on playing baseball instead. Although he had stopped playing golf for a while, Washizu ultimately decided to take on golf at North Central. 

"I liked to play sports generally and I wanted to play a sport here, so I just had to choose between golf and baseball, and I thought it was more fun to play golf at this point," Washizu said. "I liked the environment of golf here because I can practice on the golf course everyday if I want to, and in Japan we usually only practice on a range similar to Topgolf." 

When Washizu finally arrived at North Central, he began meeting with the coach and playing with teammates on the golf course, along with taking an English course called English Language Institute (ELI) before classes had even started.  

Washizu is happy with his decision to play golf, although he admitted that the weather was much windier here and harder to adjust to. He especially enjoys the team's spring break trip to North Carolina and the heightened competition of conference games. His close bond with his teammates, as well as his competitive spirit, motivates him to perform well. "I think everyone on the team motivates me to play well because I play a lot of teammates in practice, and when I lose to them, it motivates me to do better so that I can beat them." 

Coming to a new country, Washizu was most surprised by the large size of all of the houses and that the food was a bit worse than expected, although he does enjoy eating at fast food restaurants, such as Chic-fil-A and Wendy's.  

When he is not playing golf, Washizu enjoys playing other sports, such as basketball and ping pong. He also enjoys listening to music, and since coming to America, he has started listening to a lot of rap music.  

Although he has enjoyed his experience in America, after getting his degree, Washizu plans on going back to Japan to work in finance with a bank or affiliated financial company.  

Washizu and the rest of the men's golf team tee off Saturday, Apr. 21 at the Millikin University Take Back the Night Challenge in Decatur, Ill.