If new students play on a sports team, how might the ways they make friends on campus change? The Gazelle speaks with three upperclassmen about their memories of forming friendships through athletics.

Mariana Yánez, Class of 2020, is from Venezuela. She plays on NYU Abu Dhabi’s women’s football team.

MY: Right after Marhaba. I never had the opportunity to practice football before coming to NYUAD. Where I come from, there is a large stigma around women playing football. I was always very interested in playing, but I never had the chance to do so. Before coming here, I’d seen that there was a school team. I knew I was going away from home and thought that these four years would be an ideal time to try something new like playing a team sport.

MY: The types of friendships I made through football differ from the ones I made elsewhere for the simple reason that I saw these people almost every day and could not avoid them. When I started, there were not as many first-year students playing on the women’s football team, meaning [that] I made a lot of upperclassmen friends. Because they were over the social anxiety that many students can feel during Marhaba, those people became friends with me in a more relaxed way. I was intimidated by them, but most of the upperclassmen on my team were very welcoming. It took a couple of weeks for us to click as friends, but once I made those friends, they stuck.

A key part of making friends through any kind of long-term commitment is that you have accountability for each other. That is certainly true on a sports team; we encourage each other to be our best selves. If I miss a practice, they will ask me why I was not there when they see me later in the day, and we try to keep each other to a healthy lifestyle.

MY: I think it worked in my favor that I was on that team from the beginning. I might still have made upperclassmen friends without it, but playing on a team gave me a lot of insight into the ways upperclassmen think; they’re not as anxious when it comes to socializing. They have different concerns when it comes to choosing classes. They have experience, for better and for worse. Making those kinds of friends was great for me, because they gave me the comfort I needed [in order] to make the move to a new country.

Generally, I think it gives you a feeling of safety and comfort to make friends through a sports team, again because of the accountability you have for each other. We care for each other’s well-being, so even though we joke around and try to make players feel guilty if they miss a practice, we pull those players aside afterward and ask if they are doing well, or if they are swamped with homework or have problems at home. That kind of care can be so important.

Hafsa Ahmed, Class of 2020, is from Pakistan. She plays on NYUAD’s women’s table tennis team.

HA: It can go two ways. First, since you are such a tight-knit team, you have so many one-on-one interactions with your teammates — or teammate — that it naturally brings you together cohesively, you depend more on each other and know that the other person is someone you can count on.

Second, it means that you have no extras who can sit out games on the bench. Everyone has to show up for every game, or you cannot field a team. There is more pressure on you to make sure that you come for practice and for games, because if you do not, your team cannot function. We learned that the hard way in last season; we had to forfeit one game because a player on the team had a midterm exam the following day. That was the only game we lost that season. Other than that, we had a spotless record, because we made it a point to show up as much as absolutely possible.

Of course, the reason we showed up on days when we really wanted to miss practice or even miss games was always the knowledge that others were depending on us. In that sense, the strength of the friendships we form through sports can be quite unique.

HA: If I am completely honest, I think I formed most of my friendships outside of sports. What sports helped me do, however, was to connect with a group of people that I know now I would never have connected with otherwise. That point holds not just for friends I made through intercollegiate table tennis, but also [for friends I made] while playing table tennis in the Baraha in the Campus Center.

I met a post-doc based at NYUAD who loved playing table tennis. I know I would never have made friends with him if we had not played table tennis together, but he loved the sport, so we would spend quite a lot of time hanging out together around the tables in the Baraha. We eventually set up timings to meet and made it a regular thing and are friends now. I guess that example goes to show how sports can help you make friends across unusual lines of year group, home country, and much more.

Rastraraj Bhandari, Class of 2019, is from Nepal. He plays on NYUAD’s men’s football team.

RB: I came here not from an international school, and I had not interacted with students from so many different cultures as we have on campus, so I expected it to be very hard for me to make friends from other cultures. In my first week [on the men’s football team], however, everyone was so welcoming; it was just natural. I did not have to force myself to go speak to someone. When we were playing, we had to know each other’s names, because it gets you nowhere if you just yell at someone to pass you the ball and not say their name.

My friendships from the team began on the field, but they automatically widened. One player was friends with many different people off the field who became my acquaintances that way. I made my first year friends without having to put a lot of deliberate energy into it — which is great, because the best friendships are the ones you form without meaning to.

RB: Definitely! I guess it helps that many of us are studying the same majors, that we have spent time in the same places and that we have taken classes together, but even with students whom I have not had those frequent off-field interactions with, the friendships I formed early on have stuck, even with friends I have not seen in years because our study abroad choices did not align.

One stereotype I had while growing up was that smart people do not play sports. Before I came to NYUAD, I would read and hear about U.S. colleges, and I thought of sports teams as communities where people have a lot of fun but rarely study. Here, I hope, that stereotype does not hold true. My teammates always impress me when they prove just how bright they are. Perhaps it helps us make lasting friendships that we have more going for us than just the athletic connection we share. We have conversations about coding, politics, international development and more, not just about sports. I think that diversity of thought is essential to making the friendships stronger and more genuine.