By Phil Marshall
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Nicole Shakhnazarova made it to Towson University and onto the women’s tennis team based on pure talent. Coach Jamie Peterson found her highlights on YouTube and brought her to the United States from London after Shakhnazarova had sent Peterson an email to see if Towson had interest in recruiting her.
This is a common practice in women’s tennis as many recruits come from overseas, according to Peterson. “I get two or three emails a day from international players looking to come here to play,” Peterson said. “I also like to have a team that is diverse in culture.”
In the spring of 2015 Shakhnazarova started playing tennis at Towson. She is far from the lone international player. The Towson tennis team consist of nine players, four of whom are from abroad. That is the highest rate for any Towson sport, according to an analysis of rosters. Towson has 13 international players from eight different countries, led by Canada with five. International players also come from Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Slovakia, Spain, Thailand and Ukraine.
Shakhnazarova said that being recruited is a huge deal because of the opportunities.
“International players don’t have the opportunity to go to school and play sports at the same time,” she said. “America welcomes the opportunity, which brings in more players at higher international rates.”
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Towson University’s 385 athletes included in this analysis are mainly from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. They come from 28 different states. This is a very diverse group for a school that has a population of more than 20,000 students.
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The sports teams with the highest stare of Maryland residents are the men’s and women’s lacrosse teams. For the men’s team, 28/52 are from Maryland and 18/31 women are from in state. The men’s basketball team has the lowest ratio of Maryland athletes among men’s teams with 5/13 and women’s golf among women’s teams with 1/7.
“Maryland athletes are the most common in lacrosse because of the in-state tuition that is offered,” said Brian Hemming, Towson’s director of lacrosse operations. “On average we give out 12.8 scholarships a year per team which allows others to utilize in-state tuition.”
Lacrosse is a growing sport that roughly 70 Division I schools participate in nationwide. Of the 70, five major programs are in Maryland.
“Maryland is one of the hotbeds of lacrosse in the country,” Hemming said. “Towson, Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland- Baltimore County, University of Maryland and Loyola have primarily Maryland-born players because schools have the ability to recruit them locally.”
With that comes intense competition between five local schools that are located within an hour of each other. Scouts are sent out to local high schools in Maryland to recruit players, according to Hemming.
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Aside from lacrosse, other Towson University sport teams did not have the same high rate of Maryland residents.
Maryland residents are a total of 38 percent of the Towson University athlete population. The Pacific Northwest was not represented when determining where all Towson athletes are from. Of the 28 states represented, most were from the eastern half of the United States. Some of the top states where athletes are from are Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia.
For instance, the football team consists of 68 players and 44 out of them are from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.
[infogram id=”acc6d43f-0749-401b-b1f1-89f13f811834″ prefix=”7dn” format=”interactive” title=”Towson Athletes Hometowns”]