News / Sport
Hockey club gives warm welcome to international students
Weekly program breaks down isolation and builds community
Mark Phillips
MONDAY nights in September at Brunswick Hockey Club are a bit like the United Nations.
As darkness begins to fall, dozens of international students aged in their early-20s from almost every continent arrive at the club’s ground in Dawson Street for a hit and giggle followed by a free dinner.
The idea is to give often isolated and disconnected students from different countries and education institutions an opportunity to exercise and make new friends.
Brunswick is one of six clubs to be participating in the program, which has been organised by Hockey Victoria with a grant from the Study Melbourne Inclusion Program.
Students spend about 90 minutes learning the basics of hockey from some of the club’s senior players and coaches, culminating with a short practice match. Afterwards they are invited to stay for a free meal provided by a local cafe (last Monday, it was a vegetarian fried rice).
On the most recent Monday, nationalities represented among the 55 students included Indonesia, Thailand, China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the United States, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
The students came from a range of tertiary institutions including Melbourne, La Trobe, Deakin and Swinburne universities, as well as vocational training institutes.
A similar program was run by Brunswick Hockey Club in 2019 but it withered away when universities were effectively closed to international students during the Covid pandemic.
Dean Paatsch, the club volunteer who has driven the Monday night program, said the aim was to make international students feel welcomed into the Australian community.
“We saw during Covid the federal government showed international students the door and they have had a really hard time since,” he said.
“A lot of these kids have just arrived [in Australia] and were really shocked about what happened in the city last weekend [when an anti-immigration rally was held, including a large contingent of neo-nazis].
“We just want to give them a different experience to show them the Melbourne we know and love.” 
Paatsch said most international students knew no-one when they arrived in Melbourne, and if they were living in student accommodation in high-rise towers in the city there were few activities where they could meet people from outside their classes.
“There’s heaps of kids disconnected in the city and we have this infrastructure sitting here, so why not put something together for them?
“The whole idea is come along and have some fun and make some friends. These kids have changed countries, they are dealing with parental expectations, a lot of them have to work to pay for their university fees and learn a new language, so when do they have time to do something that is fun and affordable for them?
“The thing you need most when you change countries is you need support but more than anything else you need a friend and a lot of the kids studying in the city can become easily disconnected.
“We can’t solve all their problems but if we can help them make friends, that’s great.”
Paatsch spread the word about the program by contacting education institutions and student accommodation providers directly and asking them to promote it on their social media channels.
Nayanika Biswas, a young woman from India studying at Swinburne University, has met new friends from the USA and Argentina at the Monday night program and said she would be coming back.
“It was a lot of fun,” she said.
Brunswick Hockey Club has in recent years recruited players from international students, but president Graeme Kennedy said that wasn’t the purpose of the Monday night program.
“Most of them are just rapt to be out and about,” Kennedy said. “If we can jag a few of them [as players] that would be a bonus.”
Paatsch said the Monday hockey program, which will run for the rest of September, could be a model for other sports. 
“There’s spare sporting infrastructure everywhere … if you did one of these programs with cricket, there would be 500 people turn up,” he said.
“A lot of community sport is run as a gilded cage for old men who want to keep other people out. We want to do the opposite and let people in.”
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