Families of Buckley High School destinations for foreign exchange students

Aug. 22—BUCKLEY — For a small town like Buckley, the people there have welcomed foreign-exchange students into their community for decades to study abroad for a year.

The Buckley boys soccer team has had several of those students participate in soccer over the years, and the program continues to bring in foreign-exchange students because of how much support the community brings. The students are usually juniors and seniors.

Last school year, five foreign exchange students got their diplomas before heading home.

Every year, varsity soccer head coach John Vermilya welcomes, on average, one to two foreign-exchange players to join the team. Last season, they had two — Lorenzo Tognetti and Alfonso Jimenez — and had one of the best seasons in school history.

They made it to the playoffs before coming across Potter House — a private school that had multiple international players — but lost.

Despite losing, the international players brought new skills and mentorship, teaching some of the younger kids on the field how to be soccer players. Athletic Director Todd Frazee notes that the two players came from a country where they aspire to be professional soccer players.

Tognetti and Jimenez came from Italy and Spain and earned All-State honors. Vermilya recalls how jacked he and his coaches were to see what was being produced by the team.

"The couple guys we had last year were just nonstop, and they were hard workers," Frazee said. "I think they appreciated the opportunity that we had. You can tell, not that our kids take it lightly, but they made an impression on them that you need to take all these opportunities you have to get better and work hard, especially with the coaches we have, especially with the experience they come with."

Sometimes reality kicks in for the team to get a player who hasn't touched a ball in their lives, but in their countries, that's all they know. Vermilya joked that sometimes on bus rides home, the international players would sit with the coaches and talk about soccer, as the other players on the team — many are multi-athletes — are confused about the conversation.

Frazee is going into his second year as Buckley Athletic Director and has already adapted to the community by taking in an exchange student himself.

"I'm hosting a girl, and she's from Switzerland," Frazee said. "She's been here for two weeks and has been nothing but a pleasant experience for my family. With technology nowadays, I feel like we've known her for six or seven months."

The experience of getting to know a student and finding out if they fit in your family starts with an agency. There are tons of agencies a family can choose from, but for the family of a fifth-year teacher at Buckley, Charlie Fleis and his family have been taking in students for years.

Fleis has been using the International Culture Exchange Service. Although the whole process is long, it is rewarding once completed.

It starts with the host family filling out the application, and once the application is finished, comes the background check, followed by a home search of the family the student is staying at. Once the application is approved, the family tells the agency what kind of student they are looking for, then they select the student.

Vermilya, as a soccer coach and a pastor, doesn't communicate with the agencies for international players because not only is it against the rules, but for integrity and moral sake.

For Fleis and Frazee, they got to pick out the student. For Frazee, he recalls when it was time to pick the student, he and his family selected one from a country they always wanted to visit.

Then comes more paperwork, but the student gets confirmation in their home country, and then the agency in the foreign country links with the agency in America to finalize the F-1 Visa — specifically for high school students who want to study abroad.

Then the student is due for an in-person interview after they are selected. Once they complete the interview and pass, their visa is approved, and they can come to America for a year because of their F-1 Visa.

After one year, the student heads back to their home country, but some of the athletes return to America after graduating. One, in particular, is Ricardo Marquez, a 21-year-old from Brazil who currently goes to East Tennessee State University as a weight lifter — which he started before coming to the U.S.

Marquez stayed with the Fleis family when he was 14 and loved everything about it.

When Marquez came to America, Fleis was teaching at Kingsley, so he was bussing to school.

"When I first got there, I was tired," said Marquez during his first week. "When I got to Michigan, Charlie picked me up at the airport, and I would sleep in the car all time and anywhere we went."

Marquez also played soccer at Kingsley and joked that every kid from Brazil knows how to play soccer from the day they are born. When he went home, he fell back into his true passion — weight lifting.

"Back home in Brazil, my father's job changed places, so we had to move, and when we moved, I didn't have any friends," Marquez said. "This CrossFit gym opened up right next to my place, and I started training there just to be more healthy. I fell in love with it and started doing it professionally."

His love for weightlifting started before coming to America. After his program ended, he knew he would return to America, but the one way was to earn a scholarship.

After going on the USA weightlifting website, he found the schools that offered scholarships and sent his tapes to all the schools.

It didn't take long before the Buccaneers gave him a scholarship after trying out virtually.

When Marquez came to America for the first time, there was no culture shock other than how people said or did certain things. But for 18-year-old Cooper Rath, a graduate from Buckley, he learned way more than he possibly could.

When Rath was in seventh grade, his family took in a junior from Barcelona, Alberto Gracia-Sanchez. To this day, he can recall moments of having an older brother and experiences that he taught his family.

"In Spain, they have this thing after Christmas called the Three Wise Men. It's basically like a second Christmas, and every year since we send gifts to each other internationally," Rath said. "We celebrate it together, and we still eat certain dishes that his family cooked, and when he came over would cook dinner for us."

Garcia invited Rath everywhere. For the little seventh-grader, that meant a lot because he is the oldest of four siblings. He recalls going to his soccer practices and games and doing what brothers do.

"I never had an older brother or sister figure. He fit right in, and he showed me how to be toward my younger siblings. That's probably the closest thing to an older brother," he said. "I really would say it was life-changing,"

For a lot of the students that walked through the halls of Buckley High School, they remember when a foreign-exchange student was in their classrooms.

Former Athletic Director Heather Cade had a few students in her class when she was in school. Buckley Superintendent Jessica Harrand had a few in her graduating class.

"It's really good for the students at the school to be exposed to the students from different cultures and have that interaction with people outside of their general area," Fleis said.

Last school year, according to U.S. News, Buckley Community Schools had a 97 percet white and 1.2 percent minority student population. But Buckley continues to bring in international students to diversify the community.

Buckley will have three foreign-exchange students in this year's class.

"That is one of the reasons we encourage foreign-exchange students is because we aren't a culturally diverse community," said Harrand. "So it allows our local students to have that experience. Learn about different cultures, learn about different food."

"The ones who came to our homecomings and prom this year taught them some dances they do, so it enriches the environment for our current student body, as well enhancing the experience for the foreign exchange student," she continued.