Indian track stars chase the American dream at the NCAA

Pradeep Senthil Kumar admits he got a bit of a shock when he started his first year at the University of Nebraska. Born and raised in Chennai, the 21-year-old was barely prepared for the biting winter cold in the American Midwest.

“It rarely goes below 70°F here (approximately 20°C). It was really cold. When I came for the first time last winter, it was something like 21°F (-6°C), and it only got colder. I genuinely didn’t know how to handle that. I was sick for a whole month,” he says.

Switching between Fahrenheit and Celsius isn’t the only Americanism Pradeep’s getting used to. “It’s actually very funny to me that I’ve started thinking of temperature in Fahrenheit. I’ve also started thinking in terms of pounds and yards instead of kilos and metres. It was really hard at the beginning. I just had my phone with me always to convert it,” he tells  Sportstar.

Pradeep’s a lot more adept at these conversions and a lot more at home in Nebraska now. He’s part of the University track team that competes in Division 1 of the NCAA (National College Athletics Association) — the highest level of collegiate sports in the USA.

In his first season (referred to as a junior year in the USA), Pradeep broke the Indian indoor national record twice — in the men’s 600m and 800m, clocking times of 1:17.71 and 1:48.60, respectively.

He is incidentally not the only Indian to improve on the Indian national record this NCAA collegiate season. Competing for Wagner College, Arjanvir Singh clocked 22.26 seconds to improve on the Indian indoor record in the 200m. That result too came with its own unforeseen challenge. “When I checked with the Indian federation, I realised that for it to count as a national record, I needed to get a dope test conducted after the competition. I hadn’t really thought about something like this before. It’s something I’ll keep in mind before the start of the next indoor season,” he tells  Sportstar. He should get that opportunity soon enough.

There have been a bunch of impressive results by other Indian athletes in the collegiate circuit. Madhvendra Shekhawat equalled the Indian indoor record in the 60m hurdles. Long jumper  Lokesh Sathyanathan qualified for the NCAA Indoor Championships — the pinnacle of the indoor track season in the collegiate circuit. While Lokesh was the only Indian to compete at that stage, he’s not expected to be the last. That’s a good thing.

Gold standard

For years, the NCAA has remained the gold standard as far as college sports structures go. At last year’s Paris Olympics, it produced more gold medallists (127) than the USA and China combined. The champions belong not just to the US — from French hero Leon Marchand to Julien Alfred, the track trailblazer from St Lucia, athletes from 11 other countries benefited from the programme too. Beyond the medallists, there were NCAA representatives in the contingents of 125 countries.

Until very recently though, relatively few Indian track and field athletes made the journey from India to the collegiate circuit, particularly Division 1.

Tejaswin Shankar, who competed for Kansas State University between 2017 and 2021, says, “When I first competed for Kansas State back in 2018, I think there were only two Indian athletes who had competed at the Division 1 level of the NCAA before me — Mohinder Gill (who competed in the triple jump for California Polytechnic State University in the 1970s) and Vikas Gowda (who threw the discus for the University of North Carolina). As far as I knew, during my time with Kansas State, I was the only one from India competing in the USA.”

Just two years after Shankar completed his degree, though, the number of Indian track and field athletes in the USA has grown significantly. At last count, some 17 track and field athletes from India are currently competing in Division 1 of the NCAA.

There have been Indians who have competed in the NCAA circuit on sports scholarships before. However, these were predominantly in sports like tennis and squash. For the most part, track and field athletes simply didn’t make the attempt.

Players say a lack of knowledge on which path to take, uncertainty about managing the study-sport workload, and an unwillingness to step into an unknown world were behind many Indians not taking the NCAA route.

Vital experience: Tejaswin Shankar competed for Kansas State University between 2017 and 2021. He now helps Indian athletes manage their recruitment process, while directly coordinating with coaches in the USA. 
| Photo Credit:
Ritu Raj Konwar

Systematic recruitment

“I honestly didn’t even know that was an option,” recalls Tejaswin, who says his own journey started rather serendipitously. “My goal for a long time was just to stay in Delhi. But one day I was meeting (future Olympic champion) Neeraj Chopra at a hotel room in Bangalore when Gary Calvert, who was his coach at the time, suggested I try to go to the USA. He helped me out with emails and contacts, and that’s how my journey started,” he says.

Tejaswin’s experiences of simply emailing prospective coaches are mirrored by some of the other Indians who have made their own path to the USA. Arjanvir is one of them. Growing up in New Delhi, he had reached a level of success in the Indian domestic system — making the final of the 400m at the U20 national championships in 2021.

Arjanvir says he had friends and family who had played collegiate tennis and squash in the USA and went to them for advice on how to apply himself. “I was privileged in a way because I had the knowledge of how something like this was possible. I have been preparing for this path ever since I was in class 10. I took their advice and started reaching out to coaches. I sent a bunch of emails in which I introduced myself, mentioned my current timing and that I wanted to study in the USA and run at the same time. It was like sending out resumes for an internship.

“I must have emailed about 200 coaches, of whom about 100 responded. About 50 got on a call with me and about 25 got on a second call. I actually had a few colleges to choose from, and out of those, I finally decided to go with Wagner because I had a cousin who had already played tennis over here,” says Arjanvir.

While he had the advantage of knowing sportspeople who had made the journey before him, most other track and field athletes in India don’t come from that sort of background. And while someone like Arjanvir had been preparing for the NCAA admission process from the time he was in school, for most Indian athletes currently in the system, the idea of applying to a college in the USA came a lot further along in their career.

Pradeep is one of the latter. “I grew up in a home where I didn’t have money to even buy a pair of shoes. I had no clue that something like the NCAA system even existed,” says Pradeep, who was already running against senior athletes and won gold at the 2023 National Games before a coach put the thought of competing in the USA in his mind.

Unsure of how the application process worked, he approached someone who had a better understanding of things. For the past two years now, Tejaswin and his wife Siddhi Hiray, herself a national-level athlete and a graduate of the University of Loughborough, have been working with Indian athletes in order to help them manage the recruitment process better — directly coordinating with coaches in the USA.

Siddhi Hiray.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

“The fact that I got a sports scholarship was a bit of a surprise to me. But when Siddhi met me, she had this idea where she felt we needed to give other kids the kind of opportunity that I got. Since the time we started, we have been able to send five kids on a full scholarship to the US,” he says.

While Tejaswin and Siddhi are filling an important niche in the system, there’s increasing interest for coaches in the USA to directly look out for talent in India. “International recruitment in track and field was a pretty big thing even 10 years ago, but we were predominantly looking at Europe and a little bit in Africa and the Caribbean. But over the last few years, it’s been expanding dramatically. NCAA recruiting is really getting into Asia now, which would have been unheard of 10 years ago. I’ve felt for a long time that India was the next big resource for athletic talent,” says Bob Thurnhoffer, who initially attempted to recruit Lokesh Sathyanathan to the University of New Mexico and who recently recruited triple jumper Sharvari Parulekar to the University of Louisville.

Reluctant athletes

When competing at a high enough level, there’s a good chance athletes will receive recruitment offers directly from colleges and coaches themselves.

Lokesh Sathyanathan says he got his first recruitment offer right after the Junior World Championships in Tampere, Finland, where he competed in the men’s long jump. “At that time, a few coaches asked me if I was interested in coming here, getting a full ride and pursuing my studies and track as well,” he says.

Lokesh had declined the offer back then.

It’s something Tejaswin has seen happen on multiple occasions. “The biggest problem is that athletes in India are not confident enough to leave their comfort zone. Sometimes coaches don’t want to let them leave. They think that they are doing well in India, so why should they go to another country? I have to explain that most Olympians and Olympic gold medallists come out of the NCAA system, so if that is a motivation, then perhaps they need to look at that option,” he says.

“When we do get athletes to commit to the NCAA, they are in their early 20s. They might have benefitted more had they decided to go a couple of years earlier. If they have already started university in India, it becomes even more of a challenge because that removes some of their eligibility to compete in the NCAA (Collegiate athletes are permitted to compete for five years in the NCAA, but this goes down if they have attended university previously),” says Siddhi.

There are cultural misgivings as well. Tejaswin says a number of vegetarian athletes have concerns about whether they will be able to manage a change in diet. Others are unsure whether they will be able to manage their study workload or even whether they have the academic background to apply in the first place. The first concern, he says, is misplaced.

“I understand the question of vegetarianism because I’ve gone through it myself. But you have to understand that we are in a cosmopolitan world. Eventually, you have to get out there and see what all is available,” he says.

Bob Thurnhoffer.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

The fact that many Indian athletes tend to prioritise their sports at the expense of their academic advancement is potentially a bigger challenge. This isn’t as much of an issue at the time of recruitment. Thurnhoffer says, “A lot of kids have the concern that they need to have a certain grade if they want to be recruited. But that’s not always the case. Your SAT (Standard Aptitude Tests) scores aren’t necessarily important. If you are an 8m long jumper or a 45-second 400m runner, a lot of coaches will be willing to overlook your SAT scores, even if you have taken the test.

“Some of the Ivy League colleges might want you to at least sit for the SAT, but for other colleges, even just a TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or a Duolingo English Test is good enough.

“But even if you aren’t an Olympic-level athlete, there are options. If you are something like a 7.70m jumper or a girl who jumps 13.30m in the triple jump, there are a lot of mid-level NCAA Division 1 colleges that would be willing to give you a full scholarship.”

While it’s often been hard for Thurnhoffer to convince athletes in the past, he’s seeing a change in the thought process. “ Instagram has played a big role. When an athlete from India sees some of the best athletes in the world post about their college life and then go on to win medals at the Olympics, they think they can do this as well. There’s a lot more awareness and with it a lot more interest,” he says.

Even after they are admitted, there are challenges. “A lot of Indian athletes come from a culture where life is about eating, training, and sleeping. But that’s not possible at the collegiate level. You are a student athlete and not just an athlete. You have to maintain your grade point at a certain level to be able to compete,” says Tejaswin.

Heavy workload

This can be hard for some athletes who aren’t used to the workload. “I’ll have days when I would have been up since 5 am with a training session followed by seven hours of classes and then gym sessions in the evening. I’ll be thinking at 9 pm that I can finally go to sleep when I’ll remember I have an assignment due, and I’ll be up till 2 am completing it,” says Arjanvir, who is currently studying computer science.

The routine can be hectic, but the upside is obvious. “Currently, if I have no scholarship, it would cost me about $65,000 a year. I’d never have had the opportunity to go to college in the USA if I didn’t have a scholarship,” Arjanvir says.

While he’s grateful for the chance to complete his degree, his primary goal is to improve enough as an athlete to eventually compete for India. This is the target for most athletes from India competing in the NCAA system.

Stepping stone: Tejaswin says that competing in the NCAA is like a stepping stone for the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, or even the Olympics. In his first indoor season, he got a chance to compete against Koitatoi Kidali from Kenya (in pic, red), who competed at the Paris Olympics in the 800m.
| Photo Credit:
Getty Images

“Everyone knows that competing in the NCAA is like a stepping stone for the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, or even the Olympics. You get used to an incredibly high standard of competition. You are competing every other weekend. You have good and bad competitions, but you keep improving,” says Tejaswin.

A number of athletes vouch for this. “In my first year of the indoor season, I got a chance to compete against (Kenya’s) Koitatoi Kidali, who competed at the Paris Olympics in the 800m. I’d never have got the chance to compete against someone like that had I stayed in India. The kind of facilities and attention that each individual athlete gets is unheard of back in India. Your own standards and expectations get so high.

“You are part of a team of 70 or so people who are so dedicated to honing their craft and so passionate about the sport. Just being around that mindset — there isn’t a word I can use to describe it. When you walk around campus, everyone knows that, okay, this is the track team.

“You know, you walk onto the track and there are 45 of you ready to go, ready to give it your all every morning. There’s something about that mindset, it’s just amazing. I love competing with people from all over the world,” he says.

Pradeep, who was initially uncertain about applying for a scholarship overseas, now says he’s advising other young Indian athletes to make the move. Tejaswin and Siddhi too have seen the interest spike. But while they are optimistic about more athletes looking to train and compete in the USA, they admit that it takes only a few bad incidents to spoil the overall picture.

A case in point is the story of Parvej Khan (above), who earned a scholarship at the University of Florida where he earned a bit of a cult following in the middle-distance scene last year before being banned after a failed dope test in India. “Unfortunately, there is a real concern for a lot of coaches about the whole drug situation when they look to sign Indian athletes. When you have pictures of syringes in toilets going viral and after the whole Parvej situation, a lot of coaches are understandably a bit reluctant to deal with something like that,” admits Thurnhoffer.

But he hopes that such concerns will fade as more Indian athletes make news for the right reasons. Pradeep hopes he will be one of those. “When I think about where I started and where I’m at, it feels like such a great opportunity. I have to grab as much of it as possible. I miss my parents, but I don’t think I’ll be going home for vacation or anything. My goal is eventually to compete at the Los Angeles 2028 Games, and the NCAA will give me the best chance to do that. I just want to stay here and keep this fire alive as long as I can,” says Pradeep.