Is there anything more all-American than being a high school football player or a cheerleader?
Two French foreign exchange students who are completing their year at Riverside-Brookfield High School didn’t think so. One joined the football team and the other became a cheerleader, both throwing themselves head-first into the life of an American teenager.
“When I came here I wanted to push myself to be, as much as possible, an American teenager, so what is something you can do in the United States and nowhere else,” said Sidney Mompezat of his decision to join the RB football team despite having never touched a football in his life until he came to RB.
Mompezat, who grew up in a small town outside Nice told his host father, Ron Krug, about his interest in football. Krug, whose son Dylan, a 2008 RB graduate, was an RB football star, took Mompezat over to football practice on the first day of school.
RB head football coach Otto Zeman welcomed Mompezat, who stands all of 5-feet, 6-inches tall and weighs only about 130 pounds, to the team.
“That was a great experience,” said Mompezat who was an accomplished competitive snow boarder in France. “Coach Zeman was really, really helpful.”
Mompezat got into just one game. Against Elmwood Park, late in a big RB blowout, Zeman sent Mompezat into the game. On his first play he caught a pass from backup quarterback David Skowronski. It was RB’s trademark bubble screen, and Mompezat was quickly tackled for a four-yard loss on the play.
But that didn’t matter. He had played in a game.
“That’s one of my best memories of the year,” Mompezat said last week in an interview at RB.
The football team was a great introduction to RB, and Mompezat made his closest friends on the team. National record-setting receiver Mark McDonagh and quarterback Billy VandeMerkt took him under their wing and became close friends.
McDonagh became his best friend.
“When I came on to the football team, he kind of protected me,” Mompezat said. “He just had my back.”
While Mompezat was learning football and making friends, Aurore Jacques was joining the cheerleading squad. Jacques, a shy, smart girl who was a straight-A student at RB, hails from a suburb of Bordeaux, in southwest France. Before coming to RB her view of American high school life had been shaped by watching the TV show One Tree Hill, which she had watched religiously in France.
Jacques came to RB with two dreams; to become a cheerleader and to go to prom. She did both.
It wasn’t easy to learn cheers in a foreign language and than have the courage to shout them out standing before a crowd at a football game. But she did it.
“I realized that everybody wasn’t watching me,” Jacques said.
Mompezat and Jacques first met on their Air France flight from Paris to Chicago last August.
“I was just sitting next to her,” Mompezat said. “We just started to talk.”
After a bit he asked Jacques where she was going. She said, “Riverside.”
“That is the same high school I’m going to,” Mompezat replied. “That was cool.”
In the first few weeks of school last September the two students from France relied on each other. They talked often.
But they were gradually integrated into RB life and went their mostly separate ways. They both wanted to experience life as American teenagers and they were careful not to rely on each other too much.
“When you are friends with someone that comes from the same culture you become close to that person,” Mompezat said. “You (can) just close yourself to the culture that is surrounding you.”
Neither one of them wanted to do that.
They were both fascinated by America and had studied English for about four years before coming to RB.
“I grew up in this small town, and I just wanted to discover the world,” said Mompezat of his decision to become an exchange student. “I just wanted to try another way of life.”
Mompezat was fascinated by the American Dream.
“I said if I can’t go the United States I don’t want to be an exchange student,” Mompezat said. “I’m all about the American Dream. I saw in my reading and by watching movies [that] in the American Dream anything is possible and that is appealing to someone who grew up in a small town in France.”
Mompezat, naturally outgoing, became one of the guys on the football team.
“He assimilated right into our program every easily,” Zeman said. “The kids on the team were awesome as far as making him feel part of the team and part of the football family. I think he enjoyed it and we enjoyed having him.”
Mompezat loved being on the football team.
“It is amazing that someone who had never touched a football was on the varsity,” Mompezat said. “I’m really thankful to the Krugs and Otto Zeman.”
It was not always easy to go to a new school in a new culture and use a new language.
“It was hard to adapt myself, but I pushed myself a lot and I had a lot of help from my host family,” Mompezat said. “The Krugs helped me a lot.””
School at RB proved to be very different than what they had known in France.
“I think the school systems in France and the United States, they don’t have the same purpose,” Mompezat said. “The school system in the United States is more based on creativity. In the United States it is all about the creativity of the students and they put the students first. In France it’s all about learning. It’s really harder in France. We have to learn a lot and don’t think, if you know what I mean.”
Mompezat says that he was shocked the first time a teacher at RB asked his opinion about an issue.
“I couldn’t answer because, for me, I couldn’t imagine that the teacher just asked me what do I think about a subject,” Mompezat said.
In France students go to school from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a half day on Wednesday. In French schools clubs and school sports often don’t exist. Electives are rare and education is based on classical academic subjects like economics, literature and science.
“It is much more social, I think, in the United States than in France,” Mompezat said.
In France students must show much more respect for teachers than they do in the United States.
“In France when you go into class you don’t have the right to sit until the teacher tells you to sit,” Mompezat said. “When another teacher comes into the classroom everyone has to stand up. You say ‘yes mister’ or ‘madam.’ You don’t have the right to talk to a teacher until the teacher tells you to talk. You have to raise your hand and the teacher can deny your question and that will not be a big deal.”
Once in a while at RB Mompezat saw students disrespecting teachers.
“I think that is perfectly unacceptable,” Mompezat said.
Before coming to RB, Jacques had thought that American students had to wear school uniforms. She was surprised discover that RB students did not have any uniforms.
“I was so disappointed,” Jacques said.
She was shocked at how casually some RB students dressed for school.
“We would never go to school in France in sweat pants or P.J.s,” Jacques said.
Jacques said that teachers at RB go out of their way to help students, much more so than in France, where more of the responsibility for learning lies with the student.
Jacques and Mompezat say that an ideal educational system would combine the best aspects of both the French and American way of education.
“I think here we don’t learn that much,” Mompezat said. “Sometimes we push too much with the creativity. I really don’t like the French system, but the French system makes you learn a lot, and I think that here it is not enough. So if you had a mix of both it would be perfect.”
By the second semester both were became pretty typical RB students, albeit with French accents.
Mompezat even became an anchor for the weekly RBTV Channel 16 newscast, while Jacques danced with RB’s Orchesis group. Both were in the jazz band.
They both loved RB; neither is anxious to leave. But they both will return to France at the end of June.
Until then they will visit Wisconsin with their host families and do what teenagers love to do most – hang out with friends.
“The thing I like about the U.S. is that people don’t care what others think about them,” Jacques said. “I will miss it.”