Getting Into Transition Game Helps : High schools: Foreign-born students find adjusting to life in U.S. can be easier if they compete in sports.

Neither Sung Hyun nor Quoc Pham had ever seen a football game before arriving in the United States a few years ago from their native South Korea and Vietnam.

The same was true for Youseff Semaan (Lebanon), Say Iemsisanith (Laos) and Noah Kimbwala (Zaire).

But they are among a number of foreign-born high school football players in Orange County who have used the sport as a tool to help them assimilate into American culture.

“Most Americans like to do sports. It (football) has helped me to be more social with American people and to have more American friends,” said Pham, a 5-foot-10, 170-pound senior fullback/defensive back at Costa Mesa High.

Said Sung, a nose tackle at Garden Grove High: “It’s helped me build character. It’s made me grow up and mature.”

The backgrounds of the youngsters are as varied as their athletic abilities, but their experiences in adjusting to American customs have some common denominators. And perhaps those similarities are accentuated the most in their attempts to play football.

“I didn’t know about it (football) until I came here,” said Semaan, a Cypress wide receiver/defensive back who arrived in the United States 11 years ago with his family. “When I first tried it, I liked it. The ball was different and everything.”

Since then, the 5-foot-11, 175-pound senior has turned into a sure-handed receiver. He ranks third among county receivers with 45 receptions for 697 yards. But Semaan had to struggle to learn the game.

“The first couple of weeks I was lost out there,” Semaan said about his freshman season. “I didn’t know how it was going to feel when you got hit; how bad it would hurt. I was trying to hit the people who didn’t know what they were doing either. I was trying to avoid the people who knew how to do it.

“Tackling was the most difficult thing. It was kind of hard to wrap my hands around them (ball carriers) and bring them down. I kept getting run over.”

Kimbwala, an Orange High safety, became interested in football by watching professional games on TV after moving to this country 10 years ago. Like Semaan, he didn’t play tackle football until he entered high school. His apprehensions about the game were few, however.

“It didn’t really frighten me,” said Kimbwala, a 5-foot-9, 135-pound senior. “Once you take the first hit, there’s nothing to it.”

Sung, on the other hand, had to deal not only with the intricacies of a complex and rough game but with the prospect of being 5-4 and 165 pounds. While he found it difficult at first, Sung said the Garden Grove High coaches have counterbalanced his size by using his quickness.

“They’ve tried to teach me to use my size to my advantage,” Sung said. “Coach (Jeff Buenafe) says that on the line we have to stay low, so I’m able to do that pretty easy.”

What hasn’t been easy for most of the players is convincing their parents to let them play football. They each echoed stories of parental opposition raised by a variety of concerns that ranged from what some of the cultures perceive as a waste of time to the fear of injury.

“Oh yes, no question about it. I worry all the time,” said Therese Semaan, Youseff’s mother. “At first I didn’t want to go, but I started liking football. I go almost every Friday night. But I’m still afraid.”

Semaan said he had to persuade his parents to give him the go-ahead. The father of Joe Groover, a friend and Cypress quarterback, also talked to Semaan’s parents.

“My mom didn’t want to sign the release form for me,” Youseff said. “I got my dad to do it.”

Those are realities understood by football coaches around the county.

“You come from a different culture and you see these guys who weigh 250 pounds, and you see your kid who weighs 150 pounds, and you get worried,” said Raul Victores, Anaheim High football coach.

Unfortunately, some of those misgivings became a reality last week for Iemsisanith’s parents when the linebacker at Anaheim High suffered a bruised spinal column in the Colonists’ game against Savanna. The injury will sideline him for the remainder of the season. Ironically, the 5-foot-9, 160-pound senior had been concerned about the violence of the sport when he first watched a game a few years ago.

“I said, ‘I’m never going to play that sport. Those people are trying to kill each other,’ ” Iemsisanith said.

The injury didn’t do much to appease his parents, although Iemsisanith said they accepted his decision to play.

“They left it up to me. If it was up to them, I don’t think they’d let me play,” he said. “After what happened (the injury), they asked me if I would have played if I had another year (of eligibility). My mom said she’s happy I won’t play anymore this season.”

An injury nearly ended the high school football career of Pham, not so much because of its seriousness, but because of his parents.

Before his sophomore season, Pham broke his jaw in a summer passing league game. He needed surgery, but Costa Mesa High football Coach Tom Baldwin said the language barrier made it difficult to persuade Pham’s father to give his consent.

“It took awhile to get the point across to him that Quoc needed an operation,” Baldwin said.

Some coaches say communication problems with parents and even a handful of players still exist, though not to the same extent as several years ago. There are isolated cases of players with limited knowledge of English, such as Orange High wide receiver/cornerback Israel Avila, who recently moved here from Mexico.

But Lisa Peterson, the badminton coach and an ESL (English as second language) teacher at Bolsa Grande High, said that, for the most part, the foreign-born students she works with tend to stay away from organized sports until they have command of the English language. But once they get started in athletics, she said, it can actually help speed the assimilation process.

“The socialization they get with other students is incredible,” Peterson said. “I’ve noticed that the kids who get involved in sports generally get involved in other school activities and their grades improve.”

Although statistics for the current school year are still unavailable, figures in the Fall 1989 Orange County Schools Racial and Ethnic Survey showed that nearly half of the student population at Bolsa Grande consisted of Asians (46%) and that Latinos accounted for 17%.

Among the school districts, the Garden Grove Unified District--to which Bolsa belongs--had 32% Latinos and 25% Asians; the Santa Ana Unified District was 81% Latinos and the Westminster district had the second largest Asian enrollment at 22%.

According to Mike Schiesel, assistant principal at Bolsa Grande, there are 31 languages spoken at the homes of his students this year. He said he once sent a letter to Vietnamese newspapers in the area inviting kids to go out for the sports programs and the extracurricular activities at the school.

But even if the foreign languages pose potential obstacles, most coaches don’t consider them much of a problem.

“I think that hitting someone as hard as you can, that’s foreign to them,” Baldwin said. “Football is a game of demonstration anyways, not a game of talking. You just have to show them over and over.”

And for some, it is a game that has become an integral part of their life in a new country.

Said Iemsisanith: “An injury like this hurts me because I won’t be able to play anymore. That’s what hurts the most.”

BACKGROUND

Orange County students are a diverse group. An example: An official at Bolsa Grande High School said 31 languages are spoken at the homes of the school’s students. They include Afghan, Arabic, Armenian, American Indian, Cambodian, Chinese, Dutch, French, Greek, Gujarati, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Marshalles, Norwegian, Parshindi, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Pungabi, Romanian, Samoan, Spanish, Tagalog Urdu, and Vietnamese.