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Chloe Bekol
France
TOP: New Albany senior Chloe Bekol goes up for two against Evansville F. J. Reitz this past season. Bekol, a foreign exchange student from France, finished with six points in the paint for the Bulldogs. Patrick Murphy | News and Tribune BOTTOM: Chloe Bekol with Aungelique Walls, her host mom, before after Friday’ s Class 4A New Albany Sectional final against Bedford North Lawrence to advance to the Sectional final. Walls has hosted foreign exchange students for four years.
“ He did swim as a child as there was a little club near him,” said Scott Cooksey, who is Bertram’ s host father, along with his partner, Chase Corbett.“ Denmark is a peninsula, so they’ re surrounded by water. Knowing how to swim is important to them so he has been exposed to swimming. He had an understanding of most of the core strokes, but before this season he and I spent some time together going to the YMCA and I was teaching some of the fundamentals he had forgot.”
Cooskey is the swim coach at South Oldham( Ky.) High School, where he swam for the Dragons. Meanwhile, Corbett is a former tennis player at Floyd Central High School. Last year, they hosted a German student-athlete.
“ We understand the high school sports world, where we have sports ingrained in our schools and programs available to them,” Cooksey said.“ You learn with these kids that it’ s not the case in Europe. They have clubs and organizations that exist outside of their schools, so when you think about soccer people say‘ name of soccer FC’ because those are actual clubs for people who want to play soccer. They go to those places and train as a child to an adult and they keep them and trade them to keep them playing for teams. When they came here to America, they’ re exposed to our gravitas of sports where it’ s a piece of culture with American high school. Everyone is playing sports and it’ s a big piece of our culture, where back home it’ s not part of their day.”
From playing sports to enjoying the American culture, exchange students get to experience and enjoy the American life, including high school sports.
“ Exchange students are always looking for host families and you can do it as short as six weeks, or as long as a full school year,” Gary Purlee said.“ It’ s a wonderful experience and enjoyable for everyone involved.”
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PAGE NO. 10 NEWS AND TRIBUNE SPORTS MAGAZINE MAR / APR 2026