Estimated read time: 16-17 minutes
DRAPER — The 16-year-old opened a letter at his home in London and tried to comprehend how his life was about to change.
It was from a club basketball coach, Roger Payne, who was also the founder and director of the club Ballers Heaven — a youth club and semi-pro basketball organization in the United Kingdom. The letter told him that a private high school in America had offered him a "full-ride" scholarship to play basketball and attend school — Juan Diego Catholic High School in Draper.
Leaving home would be hard. But Jared — whose family asked that his real name not be used — decided it was worth any risk.
"This was a dream of mine," said Jared. The 6-foot-10 forward said everyone he knows dreams of coming to America to attend school and play sports.
It's "just a better level, just higher competition."
But what the teen and his family didn't realize when they accepted what they thought was a basketball scholarship is that the rules governing high school sports don't allow athletic scholarships. And they say promises of accommodations, food, schooling, school uniforms and insurance only materialized because of the doggedness and generosity of the host families they happened to be placed with. Jared's host family and another host family said they had to badger the school in order to get the tuition waived and pay for school lunches for their students. One family paid for medical costs and health insurance because the school did not. Both host families said they ended up buying the students uniforms because the school either did not — or they provided used clothes in poor condition.
And on top of everything else, just the fact that Jared was recruited to play prep sports at Juan Diego could have cost him his high school eligibility — the very reason he chose to travel to a foreign country to attend school on his own.
That's because recruiting athletes is expressly prohibited for schools that are members of the Utah High School Activities Association. The school mentioned in that letter — Juan Diego — is a member of the association.
Investigation underway
The association confirmed Tuesday that it is conducting an investigation into how international student-athletes are recruited to several schools in Utah.
The association's rules state coaches are not allowed to entice any athlete through promises of playing time, tuition discounts or scholarships, help with academics, or any other promise or reward.
Just offering any kind of enticement is a violation that could result in punishment for the school, the program, or the coach — even if it's offered by an intermediary who doesn't work for the school. Like a club coach, for example.
And for athletes, simply accepting the offer could cost them their athletic eligibility to play at a Utah association school.
But in Jared's case, no one was punished.
And that's because the association didn't know about the letter — or any of the other issues — until a hearing a few months ago.
"From the time UHSAA learned of these serious potential violations of association rules, they have been the subject of investigation," said association attorney Mark Van Wagoner. "Consequently, the association cannot comment further. If, however, anyone has information relating to these issues, at Juan Diego or any other school, please contact the association offices."
After enduring a number of issues at Juan Diego during the 2022-23 school year, Jared and his host parents petitioned for a transfer to a public high school. After a hearing in September, that request was granted. Jared played basketball at a Utah public high school this winter.
But Jared's struggles reveal how little scrutiny, oversight and accountability there is from any entity on international high school student-athletes coming to the U.S. to play at private schools and prep academies.
An 18-month investigation by KSL found a haphazard system of recruiting, housing and caring for these teenage student-athletes.
Among the issues revealed:
- Some athletes recruited to play sports are not part of the school's regular International Student Program, and there is no consistency in how they are monitored and cared for as high school students.
- Failure to run background checks, inspect housing, or even interview host families before some students are placed.
- Promises to pay for food and provide uniforms don't always materialize.
- No standardized way to deal with medical issues or health insurance.
- Some students live on their own or in crowded conditions.
- Some students live with coaches or other staff, including volunteers who've had no background checks, which are required by the Utah State Board of Education and the Utah High School Activities Association before working with students.
- Some students pay a reduced tuition; some pay nothing.
- I-20 forms — required for visas to attend school in the U.S. — do not always accurately reflect what families pay. And if students receive support, as Jared from London did, it's not clear where that money comes from, and it is not listed on the I-20 form he was issued from Juan Diego.
Juan Diego High Principal Galey Colosimo, assistant principal and head basketball coach Drew Trost and International Student Program director Ken Hoshino all declined repeated attempts by KSL to discuss these programs and the issues raised by students and their families. Repeated attempts were made by phone, in person, and through email.
Juan Diego's website has several sections or pages dedicated to its international student program.
It says this about housing: "International students are required to live with a host family or with a relative approved by the International Student Department. The approval process is very thorough, requiring appropriate documentation, registration, home visits and interviews with our staff."
But the school doesn't seem to treat some international students who come to Juan Diego to play sports with the same oversight as other international students.
Background checks
KSL spoke with six different families who hosted Juan Diego student-athletes in the last four years, and none of them said they went through any kind of home visit, registration or interview process. Kirk and Brandi Bengtzen, who are hosting Jared, were the only host parents of the six families who had been asked to submit to a background check.
Kirk Bengtzen said Hoshino, listed on Juan Diego's website as the head of International Student Programs for both Juan Diego and Judge Memorial Catholic High School, stopped by his house six weeks after Jared arrived. When Bengtzen questioned the timing, he said Hoshino apologized and offered an explanation that Bengtzen found alarming.
"I'm sorry, this should have been handled all before (the student) got here," Bengtzen said Hoshino told him. "But I found out about this after he already got here. And I said, 'Your title on your card says you're international student adviser,' and he goes, 'Yeah, well, this has gone totally around me. I have had nothing to do with this. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to pass the buck. But as soon as I found out, I reached out to you that day, but I guess he had already been here for a while.' So we were a little perplexed by that."
The other five families said they either had no contact with Hoshino or were told the basketball program operates outside of the International Student Program. When they had issues, they said they were told the basketball's international students were not part of the school's international program.
But the rules —and laws — governing international students are the same for all students, regardless of whether they play sports or not. In fact, the association rules prohibit offering tuition discounts or scholarships to foreign student-athletes.
'Out of sight, out of mind'
One couple who had students attending the high school and a son playing on the team were asked if they would house a student on a Sunday or Monday the week before school started. The mother, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, said they felt pressured to take a student — both because of their own child's involvement in the basketball program and because they were told this was a chance to help an "underprivileged kid."
"(Trost) made it out like he was very underprivileged … that he just didn't have a lot," she said. "And so, you know, of course that tugs your heartstrings. Of course we're always going to want to help someone in need."
She said Trost told them they would receive $200 each month as a stipend for hosting, but she said he was annoyed at her questions about how tuition was covered and whether the boy would have health insurance.
She worried that asking too many questions would adversely impact her son, who was a player on Trost's team. She was left to wonder — or talk with other parents about some aspects of the program that didn't add up — like what grade certain students were placed in.
"(The international player) was going to be a sophomore," she said, "but he was actually, I guess, reclassified. He was older than most sophomores because he was 17."
And she said there was no supervision or check-ins for her — or the student her family agreed to house.
"No one came back to us and asked how things were going," she said. "It was out of sight, out of mind."
They decided near the end of that school year that they couldn't manage this situation for another two years. So they told the coach they could no longer host the player. She said she felt that he did very little to try and find a new host family, instead asking her if she knew anyone who would host him.
"We felt a responsibility to ensure he went to a good family and home," she said. "Honestly, (the player) was left scrambling to try and figure out where he was going to go."
The student ended up living with an assistant coach — Jonathan Schrieber. He coached with Trost for four years, and said the international student-athletes are a not-so-secret problem — from housing to playing time to tuition issues.
"I never knew the ins and outs of how that actually worked," he said of the recruiting of international students that seemed to happen between club coaches and Trost. "It was just odd."
'Gray all over the place'
When Trost asked him about hosting a student in his third year as an assistant coach, he was willing but unsure it was allowed by the association's bylaws.
"Their solution was … 'Well, if you're his legal guardian, technically … you're more than a coach, you're his parents, so that kind of skirts the bylaws," Schrieber said. "I'm like, 'If you guys clear it, and it's good, we'll host.'"
But he and his wife quickly found out the situation wasn't quite what they expected. His wife went to the school to find out if there was paperwork they needed to fill out, and she was told the international basketball players were not part of the school's International Student Program. They weren't sure what to do because they were now legal guardians of a player who was not even in the school's international program. Any questions always led them back to one person — Trost, who also happened to be an assistant principal.
"There's gray all over the place all over this," Schrieber said.
Finding host families was a constant battle.
"Every year Trost has to go around like, 'Hey, I need host families; who's willing to do it?'" Schrieber said. "He's got to go beg and basically find host families."
He said he asked families who had children coming up in the program — or families that were new to the program because those families would be eager to please the coach their child would soon be playing for.
But that eventually caused discord because the new international players would often take the playing time of the parents who'd volunteered to house student-athletes. There was a dismissal of students whose families had helped build the program — and of any international recruit who didn't contribute as expected on the court.
"He just wants to win and more than anything he wants to win that state championship," Schrieber said of Trost. Schrieber ended up writing an email to Utah High School Activities Association executive director Rob Cuff about the recruiting issues. But he said to this day, he's heard nothing from the association.
Bengtzen's experience echoed this sentiment. He said he struggled to get academic help for Jared for months, and it was part of the reason the association allowed him to transfer to another school. He wrote an email to Colosimo, Trost, Hoshino and two other administrators on March 2, 2023, after Jared was told by a counselor that he wouldn't be able to graduate — but he could continue to attend the school and play basketball.
He closed that email outlining 17 issues and telling school officials he and his wife had paid several thousand dollars to support Jared, including buying him insurance and paying co-pays for an injury he sustained playing for the school two weeks earlier.
"(It) just feels as if no one cares about his academic side other than Brandi and me," he wrote. "(That) is not right. Our school is failing him. (And) someone needs to assist in the financial obligations for this young man."
Bengtzen said he never received a response to this email from anyone at the school.
He 'didn't have anywhere to go'
Sometimes, people not affiliated with the program at all would get involved in hosting.
Andrea and Bobby Munier were asked by a friend to take over hosting duties for a student-athlete who was related to an NBA player. They do not have children at the high school and were unfamiliar with the program when they got involved.
In early October of 2019, the Muniers said they got a call asking for help with a new student-athlete.
"And then the basketball coach Drew Trost called us and said, 'Hey, we have another kid that's coming here. He's from London. We don't have a house for him,'" Andrea Munier recalled the coach telling her. "'We don't have anywhere for him to stay. I'm out of town. Can you just go pick him up at the airport and keep him through the weekend? And then send him to school on Monday, and we'll find a family for him.'"
She said she agreed to do it because "there was a kid who didn't have anywhere to go." The friend who'd initially asked her to help warned her not to take a second student. Munier said she didn't intend to host a second student.
"We didn't even have a room for him," she said.
That changed after she picked the 16-year-old up at the airport.
"By that night, I told Bobby, 'He has to stay here,'" she said. "His background, his story, and how much he'd been moved around. ... He'd been to like 10 schools by the time he was a sophomore."
And she said she began to realize there wasn't much of a plan for the student.
"He had no idea that we weren't his host family," Andrea Munier said. "He had no idea that he didn't have a place to go."
Bobby Munier said the teen was worried that the family picking him up wouldn't know who he was, so Trost texted his wife a picture of the boy. When she texted Trost to let him know they'd connected with the player, the couple said his only question was about how tall the boy was.
By Monday morning, they decided they couldn't leave the teen in limbo, so they created a temporary bedroom in their basement and agreed to be his host family. Like Jared, this teen paid no tuition, although both host parents said they felt that the students were repeatedly harassed about paying tuition. Munier said at one point, her student was pulled from a class during finals — during basketball season — and was told that if his parents didn't pay his tuition, he'd be sent home.
"We were basically telling him, 'You're not doing that,'" Bobby Munier said of conversations they had with Trost and other school administrators. "And had we not been forceful enough, maybe it would have turned out differently."
Eventually, both the Bengtzens and Muniers said they were able to get the school to honor the commitment made for a "full-ride" scholarship. But both families reported how stressful and humiliating it was for the teens before they finally convinced administrators not to try and collect the money.
Temporarily living alone
The student who ended up living with the Schriebers talked to KSL on the condition of anonymity, as he's still playing college basketball. He said that he betrayed Schrieber's trust and ended up having to move out of his house at the end of his junior year. This was during the pandemic shutdown, so he ended up sharing an apartment with another international high school player who had been living on his own. But when that player decided to go home, he ended up asking a teammate if he could live with him and his family for his senior year.
"I will say the only problem that I have was the host family situation," he said. "Like, I didn't really know who I was staying with until … a week before school starts … so that was kind of messy."
He said he enjoyed staying with the first family and loved living with the Schriebers, but he said others never seemed too concerned about anything in his life except basketball.
"(Coach Schrieber) was a role model for me and his family," he said. "They were super nice to me ... and they did everything they could for me. But I ... made mistakes again, and I lied to them. And I got into big trouble. So I kind of broke into trust with them. And so they … just couldn't accept the mistakes that I did."
He said living on his own was hard as a high school student, but he was adjusting. It was the second time in his life he'd lived on his own so he could pursue basketball.
"There was a moment where I kind of got worried," he said after the other player left and he was living alone. He said without any help, he turned to a teammate.
"They accepted me as if I was one of their children," he said. "It was an amazing experience. They didn't charge me anything for living there. They took me on vacations, and all of that."
He said his parents expressed concern about paying tuition, and he thinks they ended up paying $500 or $600 per month. He no longer had his I-20, but Jared provided his I-20 to KSL. It says his family paid $5,000 in tuition to Juan Diego and no other support or assistance was provided. In fact, the family says they paid no tuition, and he received support from the school for lunches.
Andrea Munier said any time they asked about how the student-athletes were recruited to the school, she was told it was all permitted by the rules.
"What we have been told over and over again is due to Juan Diego being a private school, they can recruit for sports," she said. But even believing the school's use of an intermediary to recruit students for the school and team, Andrea Munier said how some students were treated and cared for felt wrong.
"After our involvement as a host family, none of it sits right with us. I mean, even if it is legal, the treatment of the kids and families isn't acceptable. The program needs to do better."
