Many college teams recruit athletes outside Louisiana to field the best team, but it’s rare to find a college sports team consisting of multiple international athletes.LSU’s track and field teams have representatives from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe and the Bahamas, along with players from around the U.S.Recruiting is a difficult process in track and field — a sport that runs continuously from the indoor season in January until the end of the outdoor season in June. LSU coach Dennis Shaver had to miss the home meet the weekend before the 2009 NCAA Indoor Championships on March 13 and 14 to recruit.”We do a lot of evaluating and choose to go to meets to evaluate talent where there are very large meets and meets that involve more than just one local area,” Shaver said. “I go to Lubbock [Texas], and that was the Junior College National Championships where I got to see a great many of the best junior college athletes throughout the entire United States.”The process is a little different and not quite as simple when it comes to recruiting athletes outside the U.S.”Over the years, you develop relationships with coaches that understand what you’re looking for,” Shaver said. “Maybe you have a contact in Jamaica or in Trinidad that when they see somebody that they think could help us, and they feel would benefit from coming to the United States — they oftentimes contact me, and then we go forward from there.”Among the foreign LSU athletes is sophomore sprinter Gabriel Mvumvure, who came to the U.S. from Zimbabwe.”I met some coaches from different schools,” Mvumvure said. “I just kind of kept in touch with the LSU coaches — I really loved LSU. When I started running fast and ran the times I wanted, that’s when they said, ‘Yeah, we can take you.’ It was a hard process, especially for me getting the visa and coming over.”The history of the school and its skilled track and field athletes remain vital aspects of Baton Rouge’s pull.LSU’s strongest aspect has been its phenomenal sprinters. Trinidad and Tobago native Richard Thompson was the 2008 NCAA Men’s Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year. Sprinter Muna Lee was the 100-meter dash champion in the 2008 Olympic trials. Hurdler Lolo Jones was the 2008 World Indoor Champion and a three-time USA Indoor Champion.”I heard about LSU [and its history], because athletes before me that came to LSU always come down during the summertime for the Jamaica Trials,” said junior sprinter Samantha Henry. “I knew they had a good tradition of sprinters.”Henry’s native Jamaica has its own championships, through which she got in touch with LSU.”We have the boys’ and girls’ championships, and it’s like a high school national for all the high schools in Jamaica,” Henry said. “That’s where [LSU] coach [Mark] Elliott came and saw me.”Sophomore sprinter Kenyanna Wilson, an Arizona native, said LSU’s history in the sport drew her to compete for the Lady Tigers.”You look at the Olympians they had, you look at the national champions they had — those numbers and names speak for themselves,” she said.Shaver also stressed education and performance in the classroom is important when finding athletes.”You have to find out, no matter where they’re from, if they have an interest in getting a college degree,” Shaver said.—-Contact Rowan Kavner at [email protected]