850-plus athletes chart unique journeys to UC Berkeley

Tricia Nguyen | Staff

Cal’s athletes are clearly the best of the best. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Bears earned enough medals that, if Cal were its own nation, it would have ranked 12th in the overall medal standings. There is no stork for Cal athletes. They do, in fact, need to be recruited. But from where?

From Spain’s semiautonomous Catalonia region to Contra Costa County and from private boarding schools abroad to public charter schools, Cal has recruited hundreds of athletes from around the world to play in its 28 programs.

We collected data by reviewing each sport’s roster from the 2024-25 season, most of which included information on which high school each athlete attended. According to the data we gathered, about 15% of all athletes are international students, which is representative of the wider student population, as 14.2% of the total student population are international students. Moreover, nearly 36% of athletes went to private schools, and 29% are out-of-state students from the U.S., compared to just 5.1% of the student body.

Roughly 60% of Cal athletes hail from California, compared to 78% of the whole student body. Los Angeles County, the state’s most populous, reigns as the most common home county, with the city of Los Angeles being the most common hometown of all Cal athletes. But following in short order are Contra Costa, Orange, Alameda, San Diego and Santa Clara counties — all of which rank among the top 10 most populous counties in California.

Within California, a clear divide exists in the sports played by athletes from Northern and Southern California. Southern California counties dominate football, softball and swimming, while Bay Area counties dominate rowing, baseball and cross country.

While most athletes report their home state as California, they also hail from about 35 foreign countries and 38 other states.

The second most popular home state for Cal athletes is Texas, the second-largest state in the United States. Of Cal’s 33 Texan athletes, 14 play football.

Just after Texas is New Jersey, the 11th most populous state. The Garden State has produced 22 Cal athletes, 15 of whom play in one of three Cal athletic programs: five in women’s lacrosse, five in men’s rowing and five in men’s swimming and diving.

A large percentage of athletes on many teams attended private schools — 40% of men’s baseball, 72% of men’s golf, 30% of women’s basketball and about 35% of women’s volleyball, to name a few examples.

De La Salle High School, a private Lasallian Catholic school for boys in Concord, California, had the highest number of recruited athletes overall, with a total of 12. Notably, seven of these athletes were recruited for the men’s rugby team. The next represented school was Mater Dei High School, another Christian, college-preparatory institution, with nine athletes. Among public schools, Long Beach Polytechnic High School took first place, contributing six recruited athletes to Cal.

Cal has 20 athletes from the United Kingdom and 19 from Australia, who each produced more Cal athletes than any U.S. state, excluding California, Texas and New Jersey. Some popular schools the international athletes come from include the Melbourne Grammar School, Barlaeus Gymnasium and Wellington College.

The next two most popular countries of origin are the Netherlands with 15 athletes and Canada with 13.

The breakdown greatly varies from sport to sport. The rowing team, for example, is composed of 46% international students, many of whom attended elite academies in Europe dedicated to rowing, and some of whom have even competed in the Olympics for their country before coming to Cal. Only 3% of the women’s soccer team is international, despite the sport being popular internationally.

Of course, many of these stats are explained by the nature of the sports. For sports that are more popular abroad, such as rugby, we see a huge percentage of international students, while for sports popular in the United States, like football and baseball, the team is composed almost entirely of American students. Interestingly, many of the aquatic sports are dominated by international students, including rowing, swimming and diving.

UC Berkeley’s identity as an elite publicinstitution is a source of pride for the school. Yet its athletes differ noticeably from the overall student body: they are about 12% more likely to have attended private school and 18% less likely to be from California.

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