Mia Romecka was no stranger to basketball when she joined the Wellsville-Middletown girls squad in November.

For almost her whole life, she played the game on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean – in Poland. Her father also played basketball there.

This winter, she was one of five new players on the W-M squad. But she wished she had another year playing with the Tigers. After the school year, she will be heading back overseas.

“It’s kind of sad that I’ll be gone in a couple of months,” Romecka said. “I’ll miss my team.”

Romecka is a foreign-exchange student from Bydgoszcz (pronounced bid-ɡôSHCH), Poland’s eighth-largest city with over 339,000 people. She’s from a country that has over 38 million people.

Now, she’s enjoying the small-town life in Wellsville. She is staying with her host family, Tony and Tessa Barnett, until the end of the school year.

“It’s a lot for them to come over to the United States let alone learning a whole different language than what they’re used to speaking,” Tessa said. “So, providing them with a safe and secure environment is pretty neat.”

A year ago, the Barnetts – who live in Wellsville – were the host family of Lea Denet, who was a foreign-exchange student from Belgium. Denet was the manager of the W-M girls basketball team.

“She needed a place to stay,” Tony Barnett said. “We enjoyed it so much that we got in touch with the CIEE (foreign exchange program). We reached out to them and said we wanted to host another student. So we got to look at applications and we came across Mia.”

Tony said one of the best things about Romecka’s stay was learning about Polish food.
“(Mia) cooks Polish food every now and then at home,” Tony said. “I learned how to make homemade bread and butter and things like that.”

Romecka is one of seven players on the W-M girls squad this year. She said she found out that playing basketball in the United States is much different than in Poland.
“The rules are different,” Romecka said. “For example, (the Americans) don’t play with a shot clock here. We play with a shot clock. We have a couple of seconds to shoot.”Romecka said W-M coach Steve Lasman was pretty helpful to her all season long.

“I love coach Lasman,” she said. “He is a little better than my coach in Poland. When I miss, he always tells me to keep shooting so I make it. In Poland, if I miss, I’ll get benched. He explains everything to me if I don’t understand.”

Senior teammate Helanea McKenzie said Romecka was a solid addition to the squad.

“I think Mia adapted really well from playing rules in Poland to playing here,” McKenzie said.

Tessa Barnett, who is a W-M graduate, said she and her husband enjoy watching Romecka play basketball.

“We love watching her light up,” she said. “She loves basketball, so you can totally see that it’s game on when she’s ready to play. She learned that it’s a little bit different than in Europe. She had to learn to kind of change some of the rules.”

Romecka will graduate from W-M in May. She plans to attend college in either London or Paris and major in business marketing.

Romecka was honored during a senior night ceremony on Feb. 10 against Van-Far at Roundtree and Johnson Court. The Barnetts were in attendance.

“We love seeing her classmates support her and we love seeing the community embrace the culture that she brings,” Tessa Barnett said. “Hopefully, they will remember her and have that long lasting relationship.”