Lauren Shin signed up for nursing and tennis at Hawai'i Pacific after graduating from Kamehameha with two state high school doubles championships. Getting a crash course in international relations and geography has been a bonus the last four years.

If you are from Hawai'i and good enough to play serious college tennis, chances are the only language you share with some of your teammates is the sound of the strings on your racquet. If you play serious college tennis at the Division II level, you might be the only one on your team who speaks English as a first language.

If you are Shin, you are the only Hawai'i player on the roster at 15th-ranked Hawai'i Pacific and top-ranked Brigham Young-Hawai'i.

The Seasiders (20-0) go into this week's Pacific West Championships at Holua starting Thursday unbeaten and still stinging from their loss to Armstrong Atlantic in the national semifinals last year, which kept them from an eighth national title. Dave Porter's roster has players from China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Washington, Arizona and Florida.

Armstrong, located in Savannah, Ga., won the women's and men's championships last year and is hovering near the top again now. Its rosters include players from Germany, Ukraine, Hungary, Czech Republic, Guadeloupe, Spain, England, Ireland and Estonia.

Shin's HPU teammates are from Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, Sweden and the Czech Republic. Their male counterparts are from most of the same countries, along with Malaysia, Switzerland and Austria — where coach Stefan Pampulov came from 10 years ago.

That was two degrees, a marriage and two children ago, yet Pampulov vividly remembers the conversation at a gym in his hometown with former HPU basketball player Llewellyn Smalley that altered his life.

"I asked him where he studied and he said Hawai'i Pacific," Pampulov recalled. "I said, 'Are you sure?' I didn't think there was a university in Hawai'i. In Europe, we don't know much. But what a great place — you can study in a beautiful place, play tennis every day. I was lucky."

Pampulov believes the diversity on his team is a reflection of the school, which has students from more than 100 countries. He actively seeks out Hawai'i players and had his eye on Shin early in the recruiting process, as well as former Sea Warrior Daniel Llarenas, a Word of Life graduate who transferred to University of Hawai'i this year.

"College tennis is very international," Pampulov understates. "At the top of the rankings there are a lot of international players. It's not because the American players are not as good, it's just that many American players decide to go D-I. We miss out on them."

BYU-Hawai'i's Porter agrees. Half the Seasider student body is made up of international students. "If I had a tryout without doing any recruiting," he said, "the team would probably be half international anyway."

His "target recruiting area" now is the South Pacific and Asian Rim countries. Porter's recent success getting exceptional recruits from China can be traced to Yue Wang, the 1991 NAIA national champion for BYUH. Wang trains juniors back home in China. What drew Wang to Hawai'i 20 years ago still brings in international recruits, according to Porter.

"To be quite honest, the appeal is not Hawai'i but America," said Porter, who won his 1,000th match last year. "America is a huge appeal. ... For Asians, Hawai'i is appealing because it's closer — they can go home for Christmas and their parents can visit. But for most international tennis players, it's America."

Shin took the plunge at HPU for a year initially, only because she was offered a scholarship. It wasn't easy.

"I was exposed to all these much better players," Shin said. "When you are from Hawai'i, you don't see a lot of different competition, so that first season was really tough for me — an eye-opener. From that season I knew more about what to expect, that the competition was really tough. Being able to practice with all my teammates ... they are all really good players so it's helped my game."

As a sophomore, Shin won every match she played at her first nationals, where the Sea Warriors reached the quarterfinals. They got there again last year and are hoping for more this year.

As her college tennis career comes to a close, Shin figures she has broadened her horizons athletically and, especially, personally.

"At the beginning I didn't think about being the only Hawai'i player so much," she said. "Then I really, really realized I was the only one. It was different, but in a good way. I saw a lot of different people, a lot of cultures. Definitely, coming from the Islands, we don't come across that too much. At HPU, there is more a sense of that. HPU is very diverse."

Not that Shin, a 2006 Academic All-American, has soaked up a worldly list of new languages.

"For the most part," Shin said, "when we're playing we just say, 'Come on!' "

NOTES

Last year, Armstrong Atlantic coach Simon Earnshaw — from England — became the second coach in history to lead men's and women's tennis teams from the same school to NCAA Division II national titles in the same season. The first was BYU-Hawai'i's Dave Porter, who did it in 2002 and 2003.