Spring Break
The Daily OrangeFH | For Vokjevic, ride to SU ends at Final Four
By Conor Orr
Posted: 11/20/08, 1:54 AM EST Section: Sports
"Ange and I emailed a lot," she said. "We spoke on the phone quite a bit, and she sent me a lot of information. She was really nice and she ended up making this decision easy for me."
Without a prior face-to-face meeting, the two reached an agreement - Vojkovic would enroll in the fall, where the university would provide a scholarship, an education, and an opportunity to play Division I field hockey.
It looked as though she finally had her shot, but like before, she suffered a setback.
As Vojkovic filled out her visa application, a form necessary to claim residence in the United States, she struggled with the answer to one of the questions. On the form it asked her: "Do you have any relatives in the U.S. and are they citizens?"
She did have a relative in the states - an estranged father who'd left the family when she was six years old.
Vojkovic forced herself to break more than a decade's worth of silence with man she had barely ever spoken to. But Vojkovi's father refused to give her the answers she desperately needed.
"I e-mailed him and asked him a few of these things but he didn't want to tell me," Vojkovic said. "He didn't tell me whether he was a resident or a citizen, it was the only question I needed him to answer."
Because her father refused to comply, the U.S. Embassy in Australia had to do background checks on her father in order to clear her in the United States. The background checks necessary were time-consuming and painstaking.
"It was horrible," Vojkovic said. "I was so stressed out. All my family and all my friends thought I was a completely different person."
Finally, Vojkovic arrived in America on Aug. 17. - four days late to preseason practice. Fresh off a 20-plus hour plane ride, she was in store for a whole new kind of pain.
With barely any sleep, the Australian native stumbled onto a practice field to compete against women with extensive experience, women who'd been training since January, and women who had not slept in the last two days.
Without a prior face-to-face meeting, the two reached an agreement - Vojkovic would enroll in the fall, where the university would provide a scholarship, an education, and an opportunity to play Division I field hockey.
It looked as though she finally had her shot, but like before, she suffered a setback.
As Vojkovic filled out her visa application, a form necessary to claim residence in the United States, she struggled with the answer to one of the questions. On the form it asked her: "Do you have any relatives in the U.S. and are they citizens?"
She did have a relative in the states - an estranged father who'd left the family when she was six years old.
Vojkovic forced herself to break more than a decade's worth of silence with man she had barely ever spoken to. But Vojkovi's father refused to give her the answers she desperately needed.
"I e-mailed him and asked him a few of these things but he didn't want to tell me," Vojkovic said. "He didn't tell me whether he was a resident or a citizen, it was the only question I needed him to answer."
Because her father refused to comply, the U.S. Embassy in Australia had to do background checks on her father in order to clear her in the United States. The background checks necessary were time-consuming and painstaking.
"It was horrible," Vojkovic said. "I was so stressed out. All my family and all my friends thought I was a completely different person."
Finally, Vojkovic arrived in America on Aug. 17. - four days late to preseason practice. Fresh off a 20-plus hour plane ride, she was in store for a whole new kind of pain.
With barely any sleep, the Australian native stumbled onto a practice field to compete against women with extensive experience, women who'd been training since January, and women who had not slept in the last two days.
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