Books and pucks form a winning combination

Tough balancing act

However, a tough challenge in managing time and pressure awaits Chinese-raised student athletes, who usually struggle to maintain the delicate balance between academic study and athletic training.

Xue Jiayuan, a sophomore tennis player from Tianjin who attends Troy University in Alabama, said the late spring overlap in the scheduling of final exams and the conference tournament is the toughest time for her.

During the season, a typical weekday for Xue starts with early morning classes, followed by training sessions in the afternoon and then homework late into the night, not to mention trips to matches on weekends.

"It almost drove me crazy in the first year, along with the pressure to handle the exams, which always come directly after the tournaments," said Xue, who competed in the Sun Belt Conference Tennis Championships in April.

The championships are affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division 1-affiliated conference, and the winners of the men's and women's championship tournaments automatically earn berths in the high-profile NCAA Division 1 national championships.

Overcoming hurdles

Apart from the demands of their chosen sports, the biggest hurdle to Chinese students adapting to US schools remains the rigorous academic threshold that makes no exceptions for student athletes, said Larry Scott, commissioner of the NCAA's Pacific-12 Conference.

Scott, who visited China last year to promote the Pac-12 brand, has a clear sense of the differences between the two countries' higher-education systems.

"With the system in China, if you are an athletic talent drafted by a sports school early on, you are not going to attend elite academic institutions, nor have the chance to obtain the qualifications necessary for Pac-12 schools," he said.

To guarantee that student athletes progress toward a degree, the NCAA operates an academic-tracking system to assess their coursework. If 50 percent or more of the students are not on track to graduate, the team will be disqualified from competitions.

Currently, about 21,000 Chinese students are enrolled in Pac-12 schools, which have collectively won 478 NCAA titles in a wide range of sports.

With China's ever-increasing middle class shifting toward the Western approach to education, Scott believes the gap between Chinese and Western understanding of sport's role in all-around education is narrowing: "I think there is growing ability and interest that means more Chinese students are considering going to schools abroad. So, this idea of combining elite athletics and education will become more popular. It's an idea that more families will choose and follow."