Over the past four years, Lucas Lavin has picked up a lot more about American culture than anything he could have learned over the internet.
A journey that started in Sweden, where he learned the game of football at age 10, currently has the 26-year-old Lavin at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for his final college season.
Football came naturally to him when he was first introduced to it by a couple of friends who had moved from Mexico to Sweden, and Lavin's international coach got the 6-foot-5, 327-pound offensive lineman connected with the City College of San Francisco at the age of 22. The sport not only brought him to the United States, it has allowed him to see more parts of the country than some Americans.
"I'm from a small town in Sweden," Lavin said of Nykoping, population 38,780 — or about the size of Cookeville, Tennessee, "so coming to San Francisco where you have a very diverse population and you have a lot of homeless drug addicts using out on the streets was kind of a shock to me.
"It was fun meeting different people, from Samoans, the Latino community, you've got everything, but it was kind of fun, and with me being the minority, they were very interested in me being from somewhere else, so I learned a lot about minorities in the U.S., which I thought was really fun and they've always treated me real good."
Lavin's journey then took him to the University of Northern Colorado, which wasn't quite the culture change from his first stop, but after graduating with a degree in sport administration and with one season of eligibility remaining, he landed at UTC. He has started the past three games for the Mocs (6-2, 5-1 Southern Conference), who visit The Citadel (2-6, 2-4) at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Switching schools and teams again was one thing; the real change came from the move from the West to the South, although he has enjoyed it.
"Food's a little bit better," Lavin said, noting he went to Edley's BBQ for his first meal and had burnt ends with grits while adding "it was good."
But he's been equally impressed by the culture that Mocs coach Rusty Wright has been building in Chattanooga.
"The core group of guys that were here before everybody came in, they were very welcoming and helpful," Lavin said. "For me, I had to adjust a little bit, it was different. This is actually a team where people actually work hard and they want to win championships. They don't just say that; they actually want to do it, so it was a lot of hard work.
"At the place I was at before, there's a lot of talk, but it wasn't a lot of action put into it, so I had to adjust to the workload, the heat, all that. But the core group of guys were very welcoming and took care of me. No issues at all, and I felt welcomed. I wanted to be here, and I still want to be here."
And he's wanted here: Wright noted that he's been impressed by the work ethic Lavin has displayed since his arrival.
"The leap of faith that young man has in people is unbelievable," Wright said. "We got him and he's fit right in. He's one of us, and I've been impressed by how hard he works to try and get better as an old guy. That's what you love about him, and that's why guys like him are always going to have a chance to be successful in whatever they're doing."
Of course, Lavin had to deal with teammates wanting to learn more about him at his newest stop. He had learned a lot about the country through television and the "Madden" football video game series, and he had picked up on certain stereotypes about the country. Some turned out to be true, others not so much.
"I've never had so many stupid questions in a row in my entire life," Lavin said with a laugh. "One time a teammate said, 'Australia? That's not a country, that's a continent.' He doesn't really have that knowledge of the outside world, so it felt like the stereotype about some Americans being in a bubble was kind of true."
But Lavin loves it here. He said he's not leaving "as long as he can continue to play football," which will in part be contingent on the Mocs' ability to continue playing — they hope their final three regular-season games are followed by a playoff run — before any sort of professional opportunities can present themselves.
There's a time for that. He's good where he is now.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.