Courtney Banghart wasn’t sure if Liza Astakhova was going to make it to Chapel Hill.
Banghart knew she could use Astakhova right away this season to pad her depth in the front court. After graduating the Tar Heels’ all-time leading rebounder in Alyssa Ustby and 6-foot-5 Maria Gakdeng, Astakhova could potentially solve some of the questions North Carolina has in the paint heading into Banghart’s seventh season as head coach.
“She’s got a real European flair to her game,” Banghart said of Astakhova, who turns 19 in December and has played professionally in her native Russia. “She’s got a great touch, versatility to play position-less. She’s long and tall. She can put two hands on the rim, so she’ll give us some protection too.”
Still, because of the Trump Administration’s stance toward foreign students, and perhaps specifically because Astakhova is from Russia, Banghart wasn’t totally confident the 6-foot-2 forward was going to be a member of the Tar Heels until she saw her in the flesh on campus. And that didn’t happen until after classes began.
“Getting into Carolina as an international is hard anyway. When that finally happened, the whole visa process started, which is a totally different journey, especially with where we are in government and with Russia,” Banghart told SB Nation. “Because classes had already started, they could have turned her away and said, ‘If you’re here on a student visa, you have to be here when school starts.’ But they let her through and the rest is history.”
Astakhova’s path from Moscow to North Carolina’s Research Triangle was unorthodox, to say the least. From her native country, she flew to Serbia where she lived in a hotel in Belgrade for nearly a week while trying to secure a visa. She then flew to Istanbul, Turkey, then to Chicago, Illinois, and then finally landed a little after midnight local time at Raleigh-Durham International Airport two days after classes had begun at UNC-Chapel Hill. She got off the plane with one bag — her first time ever in the United States — caught a little bit of sleep, and was in an 8 a.m. math class the next morning.
Because she was never totally sure if Astakhova was going to arrive, Banghart didn’t tell her players that they would have a new roommate until two days before she stepped foot on campus. Nevertheless, Astakhova’s teammates jumped into action, buying her fresh sheets and towels, welcoming her to Chapel Hill with open arms.
“All those steps are incredibly painful and take a lot of patience… Quite a journey getting a Russian into our country,” Banghart said. “Some kids are just built different. She’s one of them.”
Astakhova isn’t the only international college athlete to encounter hurdles during Donald Trump’s second term in office, and North Carolina’s women’s basketball team isn’t the only NCAA program to have to figure out how to navigate the maze of impediments.
In August, the State Department revoked more than 6,000 international student visas because of what it called violations of U.S. law and overstays, according to the BBC. Two months prior, the State Department paused the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students. On Aug. 27, the Trump Administration proposed a rule that, “if finalized, would limit the length of time certain visa holders — including foreign students — are allowed to stay in the United States.” That same day, NPR reported that “universities all over the country are experiencing” drops in enrollment among international students. The Association of International Educators predicts a decrease of about 150,000 new international students this fall.
Trump’s messaging on this has been mixed. While his administration has clamped down on international student visas, he has contradicted those actions by publicly saying he wants more foreign-born students in the U.S.
“I like that other countries’ students come here,” Trump said in August. “And you know what would happen if they didn’t? Our college system would go to hell very quickly.”
Trump’s moves related to international students is something that’s being monitored at the highest levels of college athletics. But, as ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips says, there’s not much that conferences or even the NCAA can do about it.
“We are aware and we try to do whatever we can, which is really not a lot. These are issues that end up going through Washington,” Phillips told SB Nation. “We just try to be supportive of our coaches and student athletes. We have international student athletes in a variety of sports, and we’re just trying to be supportive and make sure that they’re able to navigate through whatever process is necessary to get them on campus.”
These issues with international student visas are surfacing at a time where more international students are interested in coming to the U.S. to play Division I college athletics.
Last spring, 264 international players competed in March Madness for men’s and women’s basketball, amounting to about 15 percent of all players, according to the NCAA. Since 2010, the number of international players in men’s and women’s college basketball has increased by 175 percent.
If you ask longtime Louisville women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz — who has four international players on his roster this season — those numbers are only going to keep growing.
“Personally, I don’t think international recruiting has changed,” Walz told SB Nation. “I think more international players are willing now to listen about coming over here because of (revenue sharing), because of the fact they can earn passive income — where in the past, the real good ones, they would stay home to sign a professional contract. I think it’s just opened up the doors for more international players.”
Indeed. Before, the best international players were faced with a difficult choice if they had aspirations of playing in the NBA or WNBA someday: Go to college in the U.S. and get maximum exposure to the American style of play, scouts and media, or stay abroad to play professionally to earn money right away.
Because of how the House Settlement paved the way for schools to share revenue directly with athletes, they can now do both.
“Now, not only can they get a degree, but get paid behind that. I think that’s been a big part of the wave,” Clemson head coach Shawn Poppie told SB Nation. “The rules themselves have changed, the fact that you can even be playing pro and then make that transition. We’ve seen that on the men’s side, then late on the women’s side and there’s some programs taking advantage of that. We’ll see what that looks like moving forward, with the federal government and visas.”
In July, one international recruit garnered the attention of a lot of folks in women’s basketball when she signed with Kansas State. Nastja Claessens isn’t just one of the best players from Belgium — who has featured for her national team at the 2024 Olympics and this summer in the FIBA Women’s EuroBasket — but she was previously drafted by a WNBA team. The Washington Mystics selected her with the 30th overall pick in 2024, but she never signed. Washington will retain her WNBA rights up to a year after she exhausts her college eligibility.
More international players like Claessens, who are drafted by WNBA teams but chose not to sign, could follow in her footsteps.
That is, of course, as long as they’re from a country that isn’t in Trump’s crosshairs.
Heading into his second season at Clemson, Poppie has just one international player on his roster in junior guard Rusne Augustinaite, a transfer from Georgia Tech who went to high school in Florida.
“We didn’t have any visa issues with her,” Poppie said. “Lithuania’s a pretty simple country when it comes to that aspect. It also helped that she was already in the U.S. at Georgia Tech.”
Foreign-born players are seemingly everywhere in women’s college basketball. For example, every women’s basketball team in the ACC has at least one international player on their roster this season. Of the 18 ACC teams, 14 have multiple international players. Three of those athletes — Canada’s Toby Fournier (Duke), Denmark’s Laura Ziegler (Louisville), and Australia’s Lara Somfai (Stanford) — garnered all-conference preseason recognition.
Virginia Tech is among one of the four ACC programs with just one international player on its roster: Špela Brecelj, a 6-foot-2 freshman wing from Ajdovščina, Slovenia.
While head coach Megan Duffy told SB Nation that Brecelj didn’t encounter any major visa issues, she arrived later in the typical recruiting timeline too. Virginia Tech didn’t announce her addition to the roster until Aug. 21.
“Some international players made some decisions a little bit later to come over, weighing college versus turning pro,” Duffy said. “And then, yeah, there was a lot going on with our government and them being able to get their visas in a timely manner. Some people had some difficulties even obtaining those visa appointments. Luckily for us, Špela didn’t have too many issues. We were able to get it done in August.”
In College Park, the Maryland Terrapins are carrying five international players on their roster, hailing from Israel, Belarus, England, Slovenia and Romania. Longtime Terps’ coach Brenda Frese says she’s aware of some of the challenges other coaches have encountered, but Maryland was spared of them.
“Luckily, we have not (had any visa issues), but we were definitely concerned about that, because we had heard a lot of those things that were going on,” Frese told SB Nation. “But for us, fortunately, we were able to avoid that.”
The same was true for Davidson which has nine international players from Australia, Spain, Martinique, Hungary, Belgium and Greece.
“Our players had no problems getting their visas and were over here on time,” Wildcats coach Gayle Fulks told SB Nation.
For now, the Trump Administration’s actions hasn’t stopped any of women’s college basketball’s international stars from featuring for their teams, but his policies and how they might change have been proven to be unpredictable. Could student visas be harder to get next season? Could the rules for international students change within a few months?
Courtney Banghart isn’t taking any chances. She has three foreign-born players on her roster this season — hailing from Russia, Finland and Brazil — and they’ve agreed to not travel to their native countries during the holiday break in December.
“None of my internationals are going to go home for Christmas. I’d be happy to buy them a ticket, right? I’m just not sure they can get back in (to the United States),” Banghart said. “We hope that things settle a little bit, but they know what they signed on for — they’re here to play in our country.”
