College coaches and international athletes are stuck in an unnerving limbo, saying they’re unsure how to plan for recent changes in U.S. student visa policy that could potentially wreak havoc on their rosters this year.

The State Department confirmed it has stopped scheduling interviews for new student visa applicants. A brief pause would not cause problems for most college sports teams — according to coaches and other specialists who spoke to ESPN — but if the pause stretches late into the summer, it could severely impact some athletes’ ability to reach campus in time to play in their upcoming season. Early summer is a crucial window when many incoming international students typically schedule their visa interviews.

“The main guidance we’ve gotten is don’t freak out yet,” said University of Tennessee Martin basketball coach Jeremy Shulman. “But that ‘yet’ has been the key word.”

Some coaches told ESPN that as much as a quarter of their roster might not be allowed to enter the country this fall if the pause persists.

Shulman — who expects to have 12 international players this year, the most of any Division I basketball team — said he has four players who now are unsure if they will make it to campus.

“It decimates our roster,” he said.

Vermont men’s soccer coach Rob Dow won the national championship last season with 10 international players, including five starters. Six months later, Dow said his plans to bring in “three blue-chip players” could be in doubt if those recruits are unable to enter the country.

None have visa appointments scheduled. He said he’s still trying to get more information.

“It’s just a ton of uncertainty,” Dow said. “Not really sure what is consistent here.”

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters Tuesday that the pause “will go pretty quickly” once consulates and embassies are prepared. She said she expected an update in “a matter of days.”

Shulman has two recently committed freshmen who have yet to secure visa appointments. Two current players returned to their home countries to renew their visas, and they also have been unable to secure appointments. Shulman said he was “scrambling a little bit” for both his players and his program.

“We’re very concerned if we’re going to be able to get these guys even in the country,” Shulman said.

International students typically aim to complete the application and interview process well before their expected arrival date. Before the interview, they must complete an I-20, which the government calls a “certificate of eligibility for nonimmigrant student status.” Applicants also bring transcripts and other support materials the interviewer might request. People who run services to help students in this process told ESPN that 10-50% of the students they work with don’t have visa appointments yet.

A runner from Poland, who plans to compete for Texas A&M, told ESPN he is not concerned yet because Scholarbook — the international athlete placement agency that has helped with his recruitment — told him the pause shouldn’t derail his plans. He asked ESPN to withhold his name for fear of reprisal.

Others aren’t so sure, especially given the pace of recent immigration edicts from the Trump administration targeting international students. “The implication is that once they have everything figured out, they’re going to get the process back up and running,” immigration attorney Amy Maldonado said. “But I don’t trust them or believe anything they say.”

On April 22, the administration aimed to revoke all student visas at Harvard. The university sued the next day and won a temporary injunction. New plans are afoot to impose harsher visa restrictions on Chinese students.

One university international center director who spoke to ESPN on condition of anonymity said that if the pause takes a week or two, “it’ll be a minor inconvenience. If it takes longer than that, it’ll be a considerable inconvenience.”

The pause reportedly is to boost vetting of applicants’ social media posts. One Division I coach said he suggested that his current international players scrub — and possibly delete — their social media accounts since it’s unknown what the new vetting will be. Some reports say the vetting will include deleted posts.

Shulman and other coaches told ESPN it is too soon to know if visa uncertainty will force them to recruit fewer international athletes in the coming years. He termed it a “very tense and scary time.”

The pause is not believed to affect those who already have interview appointments. Current students shouldn’t be impacted unless their visa has expired and they’ve decided to travel outside the country.

Shulman said his two returning players have valid visas that expire later this year, but they went home to renew. It’s unclear why they have not been able to schedule appointments yet.

Dow, the Vermont soccer coach, said if he were not able to get those three international recruits in, it would impact the roster but suggested the deficit would still be manageable.

For other programs, he added, the deficit “might be five or six or nine or 10.”

Shulman and coaches in other sports said they aren’t enacting contingency plans yet, hoping it’s a short pause, but they can’t help but think about it.

“Families are really concerned because this is something most of them have invested a lot of time and money in the process,” said Philipp Liedgens, the director of operations for Keystone Sports Germany, an international athlete placement company. He said the recruiting process could take up to two years — only to experience these problems at the end. Some of those athletes “have no plan for anything else,” he said.

Thomas Bojanowski, the founder of Scholarbook, said he has seen a 25-30% drop in interest from future students in the past six months. Liedgens said his firm has seen enrollments for future classes drop nearly 50% in recent months.

Dow said he has been answering questions from recruits about what it’s now like in the United States compared to media reports from overseas. Universities are trying to answer as best they can. Coaches aren’t sure what to tell current players, either, when they ask if it’s safe for them to leave the country.

One Division I men’s tennis coach said he advised his international players against it.

Vermont has a trip to Europe scheduled in June. Dow said he’s still figuring out whether any of his international players may need to skip the trip because of immigration uncertainties.

Shulman said that while sports are part of this, these decisions impact them as students. Many use college athletics to get a quality education at an American university.

“These kids need and deserve this opportunity here in the States,” Shulman said of his own players. “And I’m hoping that we can get through so they get this experience.”

Last year, the NCAA reported that more than 25,000 international athletes were enrolled in schools across its three divisions. In Division I, international students comprised 30-64% of rosters in a variety of sports, such as tennis, ice hockey, soccer and field hockey, a 2023 NCAA document said.

More than 4,000 athletes come from Canada, and over 1,000 each come from the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and Australia, according to the latest data provided by the NCAA. The international center director said Canadians should not be impacted because they typically do not have to sit for visa interviews.

“Bruce Springstein!,” Luzerne County Election Board Vice Chairwoman Alyssa Fusaro announced to the room of county workers and board members processing May 20 primary election write-in votes.

A few minutes later, another voter write-in selection of Bart Simpson for a school board seat was shouted out by someone else.

To break the monotony of reviewing more than 20,000 write-in votes and illustrate the scale of the problem of write-ins submitted in jest, the group decided to log the questionable ones on a dry-erase board.

The board eventually had to be flipped to the other side to squeeze them all in. A second board would have been needed if the group had recorded off-color write-ins, participants said.

It was funny but not funny.

Fusaro said many voters also write in their own names or those of friends or family, even though none of them want the seat.

Unlike the ones on the dry-erase board, these potential real contenders must be made part of the official record in races that have no candidates appearing on the ballot.

Some voters also go out of their way to write the same name for every single race on the ballot — local, county and statewide offices.

Write-ins that are not serious slow down completion of the write-in tallying while the public is pushing to see the write-in results as fast as possible, Fusaro said.

In addition to the usual cartoon characters, celebrities both dead and alive, classic figures from fiction, national-level politicians and random criminals, there were these verbatim selections in the county primary: “someone different,” “no one else,” “anybody else,” “anybody honest,” “unknown,” “none of you,” “all suck,” “stop stealing,” “someone new,” “why I pay,” “I’ve no kids,” “anyone represent taxpayer,” “none,” “no buddy,” “not me,” “not you” and “not any of these clowns.”

Other voters tried to convey a broader message by writing in “the U.S. Constitution,” “life,” “liberty,” “justice,” “property,” “corruption,” “sleaze,” “racist,” “connected” and “Free Palestine.”

Also worth mentioning were selections of “box of paper,” “baloney and ham sammich” and “box of rocks.”

County officials started observing a marked increase in write-in votes in 2006 when the county switched to electronic ballot marking devices, with some theorizing the write-in option was more noticeable than it had been on the old lever machines.

The May 20 primary election tallying group spent six days at the county’s Penn Place Building in downtown Wilkes-Barre adjudicating write-in votes and ballots that had been flagged due to extraneous marks and other issues.

Around 3 p.m. Tuesday, county Election Director Emily Cook alerted everyone that there were 39 ballots remaining for review.

“We can do this,” someone yelled.

A collective countdown erupted when the last ballot review was underway about 10 minutes later.

Cook said a report on the write-in winners will be posted on the election page of the county website at luzernecounty.org.

Letters will be sent to write-in winners asking them to accept or decline the nomination by a certain deadline. Those accepting will be required to submit paperwork.

The election board is set to certify the primary results at 10 a.m. Monday in the county courthouse on River Street in Wilkes-Barre, said Election Board Chairwoman Christine Boyle.