Pablo Arnau Beltran is one of two international basketball players on the Dean roster, coming all the way from Spain. (Photo Courtesy: Reed Becker).
While the Dean College Bulldogs Men’s Basketball team has a lot of players from around the United States, they also have been able to recruit some international players on their roster. One of these international recruits is freshman forward Pablo Arnau Beltran. Beltran hails from Vall de Uxo in Valencia, Spain, which is a nice town with 35,000 people on the eastern coast of the country.
The story of how Pablo ended up in Massachusetts to attend college goes back all the way to when he was five years old, as his father always told him that he was going to go to college in Boston. Beltran also was set on attending college in the United States from the time he stepped foot on American soil. “The first time I went to America was when I went to San Francisco in July of 2018 at 16 years old to learn how to speak English. That was also the first time I had traveled alone. When I went to Santa Barbara and saw the facilities and how the people there even as young as 17- and 18-years old love the game, it was really important for me to study and play basketball at the same time, which in Spain you cannot do.” He also grew up playing basketball and played at the highest level in Spain for the last six years.
While Beltran’s experience was tough at first, he was still excited to come to play in the US as he had been waiting for more than a year since he graduated high school in 2020. However, because of COVID-19, he took his first year of college off in Spain. So far, Pablo is very pleased with the academics at Dean as all the faculty are friendly. “All the professors and faculty help a lot. If I need to stay after class for 15 minutes because I am having trouble with something, they stay and take care of me. It has been amazing. In Spain, you go to class with 250 students and the teacher is like, “you are just one more.” Here at Dean, I am in class with only 20 people.” Beltran has also had an easy time adjusting to Dean socially as a lot of his friends are on the basketball team, and he gets to do a lot of things with them like Open Mic Night, Bingo and go to Boomers to watch football on Sundays.
Beltran still has some difficulty interacting with his family back home since Spain is six hours ahead of the United States. “At first, it was difficult because I wake up and everyone is either in class or at work and when I got out of practice everyone is sleeping. But now I have a 45-minute gap in between classes so I get to talk to my parents and sister every day for 15-20 minutes because that is the only time that I have.”
Before Pablo came to the United States, his original thought about America was that they have great colleges and are the best at what they do. He got this impression from his father who has some businesses in the States. Before arriving here, he had heard a lot of negative stereotypes about Americans, such as the existence of lots of racists and lots of guns. Beltran also mentioned how people from outside the United States see Americans differently from what he now sees and thinks about them. “What we see outside of this country is from the news about the US, so people have a bad idea of what it is. I think it is because when people do their good things, well, others are always trying to make you look bad. In my opinion, COVID has hurt America a lot, such as when Trump said different things like to take bleach to get rid of COVID.”
One thing that Beltran does not like about the United States is that when he goes shopping, the price on the tag is never what it says it is because of taxes. He finds it frustrating because you never know how much something really is until you go to the register. He also misses the warmer weather in Spain because it gets as warm as 90 degrees and rarely gets as cold as 45 degrees. Overall, it is warm year-round so you could even go to the beach in February.
COVID-19 has also had a big effect on Beltran as an international student. When he first flew from Madrid to Boston on September 1st for the Fall semester, he had to fly to the United States by himself since his parents were not allowed to enter the airport because at that time only passengers were allowed to enter the terminal. In fact, if you were a tourist, you could not enter the United States at all. Luckily for Beltran, he was able to enter since he had a student visa. “The toughest moment for me for the past year and a half was saying goodbye to my mom, dad and sister. I had to say goodbye at the door entrance of the airport. I definitely broke down crying when we were in the car and left my hometown.”
Once Pablo landed in Boston, it was his first time at Logan Airport, and he walked with police officers to what he described as a scary room where he stayed in for 30 minutes with no phones or any communication while they asked him for the information which Dean College provided showing where he would be staying. Luckily for Beltran, one of his father’s friends picked him up from the airport and helped him move into his dorm the next morning.
On the basketball court, it has been a challenging first year for Pablo since he suffered a concussion in the first official practice of the season, which forced him to miss the first month of the season. When he returned to campus after winter break, after practicing for five days, his roommate and best friend got COVID the day they returned, which then led to him also testing positive later in the week, and he was just finally cleared from quarantine on Jan. 28.
While the team is currently struggling, Beltran says that they just need to believe in themselves when shooting the ball or when on defense that they will get a stop and get the ball back. Beltran plans to win as many games as possible and give 100% whether he is on the bench or playing for the entire game.
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