Graduate counseling intern brings global perspective to sports psychology
This semester, the Waynesburg University Counseling Center is home to an intern who has traveled a long way for her education.
The intern, Sports Psychologist Zenzi Huysmans, is from Swaziland, a small country located inside of South Africa and bordering around the country of Mozambique. Soccer is the prominent sport of the culture, and limitations are put on education there.
For Huysmans, education was always available, due to her parents teaching with the United World College of South Africa (UWC). She was accepted to Duke University for her undergraduate degree and now is completing her Master’s degree at West Virginia University.
Director of the Counseling Center Jane Owen helped establish a relationship with West Virginia University for psychology interns to earn practicum hours with Waynesburg University.
”Usually students are here for two semesters and then when they are ready, getting ready to stop usually to write their dissertations,” said Owen. “[The previous intern] brought [Huysmans] up to be introduced.”
Every week Huysmans meets with Owen to improve her practice and get professional advice.
”I think she is great, she sat in a session with me this week not an athlete, and was very impressed with her session skills,” said Owen.
When Huysman was young, she swam, but soon realized that she didn’t enjoy the individualism.
Once Huysmans learned about team sports she soon made the transition and played basketball, soccer and volleyball.
”In the English Primer League I am [an] Arsenal fan. In the NBA I am Spurs fan, but more of a Tim Duncan fan,” said Huysmans. “He is Mr. Fundamental. That is how I play when I play basketball; its all about the fundamentals.”
Huysmans works with mostly athletes in her sessions but wants to use sports for more than just a game.
”I am more interested in using sports as a platform for social change,” said Huysmans. “So at home, I think that can be a good thing–just creating youth programs that are sport-based that can help change kids’ lives.”
While Huysmans’s skin is white, she has been the minority in school for much of her life. This impacted her transition to the United States, Huysmans said.
”That was an interesting switch when I came to the [United States], always being the minority population to becoming the majority. I found that quite uncomfortable actually,” said Huysmans. “There is always a surprise first when they hear my name, that I am from Swaziland, and if they haven’t met me yet the assumption is that my ethnicity is not Caucasian.”
It was an uncomfortable transition, something that Huysmans didn’t enjoy, as she want to identify with her real home and not her ethnicity.
”[I would] get automatically locked in as being a white American but I am not,” said Huysmans “I wanted to maintain my identity because I am not American I am proud where I come from.”
Huysmans has become homesick so far away from home and still views her home as Swaziland and views home as home.
”I still live there in my opinion; I am just here for school,” said Huysmans.