Foreign exchange students loves sports

​By Dave Merchant dmerchant9701@yahoo.com
 
Dexter senior foreign exchange student Dat Nguyen loves being a guard on the basketball team.
He came to Dexter as an exchange student from Vietnam.
 
“This year has been perfect,” Dat  Nguyen said. “Basketball is the only sport I am going to play.”
 
He has good memories of this season. “Playing basketball with the team and helping them out,” he said. “School is harder in my home country.”
 
He liked when the players shared about the reason why they were on the team. His favorite athletes (Team) everyone, and (NBA) Jason Williams. Mr. Jacobs is his favorite teacher and Coach Rushton is his favorite coach.
 
He is staying with Mrs. Mendez, along with Alan (exchange student from China). His parents are Phong Nguyen (pronounced like font but without “t”), and Hong Nguyen (pronounced like honk but without “k”), and his sister is Han Nguyen (pronounced like hung).
His advice for young players is good. “Don’t give up, keep practicing, keep working on what you do, everything starts from the smallest things,” he said.
 
Dexter head basketball coach Jason Rushton had this to say about Dat: “Dat is a great kid. We could tell that he just loved the game of basketball from the moment we met him at open gym. He would email me almost daily to find out when the next workout or open run was going to be...he never missed one. And then conditioning started. Dat was there. We had multiple people leave within the first 10 minutes of each day of conditioning, but not Dat. He kept coming back for more. And then tryouts began. Dat was there. And again, multiple kids left within the first 10 minutes of tryouts (Dexter Basketball isn’t for everybody). Dat made it through every workout, every sprint, every mile run we did...because he loves the game. Throughout this experience, he became friends with everyone that made the team, so it was impossible not to have him on board as a manager. Our guys stepped up to make sure he had a ride to and from practice every day. It has been a pleasure having him around our team, and we are better because of it. There have been times throughout this season where we didn’t give our best effort on game night...I never had to say anything in the locker room because Đạt had already said it. He’s a kid that loves the game, understands the game, and is willing to hold his teammates accountable.” 
 
 
 
 

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