Kei Kamara: An Athlete's Journey

It’s a long way from a dirt soccer field in a war-torn west-African nation to the perfect turf of a Major League Soccer stadium in the United States. Geographically, they’re on opposite sides of the world; experientially, they’re separate universes. Recently, sophomore Kei Kamara (Kinesiology) bridged that distance, when the Columbus Crew made him the ninth pick overall in the MLS  SuperDraft and the first person from the tiny nation of Sierra Leone to reach the top echelon of American soccer.
 
After two headline-grabbing seasons playing for the Toros men’s soccer team, Kamara, who graduated from Leuzinger High School, will now put his full-time studies on hold to play professional soccer under the guidance of former L.A. Galaxy and UCLA Bruin coach Sigi Schmid.

“It was a good feeling to finally get what you want and what you’ve been waiting for and looking forward to for so long,” says the 6-foot-3-inch, 173-pound 22-year-old. “I was not expecting to go in the first round, but I did. I’m happy.”

Kamara’s long journey across geography and culture began in 2000, when, as an 11-year civil war was winding down in Sierra Leone, he was admitted to the U.S. through an Immigration & Naturalization Service refugee program. After spending some months in Maryland with his father, a lab technician who had been in the U.S. for a few years, Kei (rhymes with “hi”) moved to California to live with his mother, a casino waitress who had immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1990s.
 
But Kamara’s journey to the top ranks of soccer started much earlier, in the small town of Kenema, where the main languages are Creole and Mende and Kamara was a self-described “soccer-crazed kid in a soccer-crazed country.” He learned the game playing barefoot against older, bigger, tougher boys in the streets and on makeshift fields, experience he credits for his success since arriving in the U.S.
 
“When you play on cement or dirt or on the street, you have to use your brain,” he says. “You have to use your speed to get around people or you get hurt. What you learn there works. You play and represent, but you avoid getting hurt.”

As the soccer ball rolled, the civil war swirled. “It was dangerous all the time,” Kamara says. “You never knew what would happen. You saw a lot of violence and lived inside of it. When the rebels would attack, we’d spend some hours or the whole day hiding inside the house. My older brothers watched out for me, and the family stuck together no matter what happened.”

To Kamara, having gone without equipment or even fields during his early soccer experience has proved a great benefit. “Look at the top players in the world,” he says. “Look at the Brazilians. They all started as dirt players. Here, you have all the opportunity to play AYSO and all that. Back there, you have your desire. You have shoes, you don’t have shoes, you still play.”

But even in those circumstances, Kamara was tending to his future. “I worked hard to stay out of trouble and hang around with the right people,” he says, adding, “I had the dream all the time in the streets.”

At Leuzinger High School, he played volleyball and basketball and starred on the soccer team that was CIF co-champion in 2002. The following year he was named Daily Breeze player of the year and was soon being recruited by CSUDH soccer coach Joe Flanagan, who quickly appreciated the skills of the lightning-quick, long-striding forward.

“Some players are fast or work hard or have the physical stature or good skills,”
Flanagan says. “Kei has it all, and his work rate is nonstop. He’s relentless. He wears defenders down. They can’t stay with him for a whole game, and if they can, he beats them with his ball skills. He has such a strong commitment to making something happen, and he’s never intimidated by playing at a higher level. When he first came to Dominguez, I thought it would take him a year to adjust to the collegiate level of play. It took him a week. Last summer when he was playing against Chivas, he wasn’t intimidated at all. I saw him take on three professional defenders at midfield and score. I knew right away he was going to be special.”

During Kamara’s first year with the Toros, in 2004, he scored 16 goals and was named California Collegiate Athletic Association Most Valuable Player while leading the team to the NCAA Division II championship game. Prior to the 2005 season, when Kamara would be named a third-team All-American and the Toros made it to the Division II quarterfinals, Flanagan described the combination of Kamara and fellow starting forward Francisco Corona as possibly “the best 1-2 combination in the country and probably the best ever at Dominguez Hills.”

For years, Flanagan himself held the CSUDH scoring record, with 38 career goals. Last year Corona broke it by scoring 43, but after the 2005 season, Kamara already had 31, with two years of eligibility remaining.

“We’d love to have him back for two more years,” says Flanagan. “He’d be breaking records, but to have the exposure of a player from Dominguez going to MLS is great.”

Kamara says he chose CSUDH after a good deal of research. “They had won the national championship, it was one of the best schools around for soccer, and I liked the facilities,” he says. “To reach the next level, it was where I had to go.”
The coach remembers a moment that illustrates Kamara’s characteristic initiative in all areas of life. “We’re always chasing athletes around, trying to get them to fill out paperwork, get their classes organized, and so on,” Flanagan says. “We had recruited Kei and invited him to come to school here. We didn’t hear back for a while; then one day I was sitting in my office and there’s a knock on the door. It’s Kei with his mother. ‘I’m ready to go,’ he says. ‘I want to be here. I’m all signed up. What do I need to do?’ He had it all dialed in, his classes, everything. He doesn’t wait for others to do something. He does it himself.”

Kamara’s next stop on his way to MLS was Generation Adidas, a player development program begun in 2004 and designed to identify and nurture the elite youth soccer talent in the United States. To join, players have to be recommended by at least three coaches who say they’re ready for the next level and don’t need to attend all four years of college.

Players then develop by training and playing with one of the organization’s 12 professional clubs. Kamara worked out with Chivas and the Galaxy, the 2005 MLS champion.

“You have a lot of pros on your side,” he says. “It helps you to see where you are and where you need to get to.”

Kamara’s 11-member Generation “class” includes six players from the U.S. youth national team and two from the under-17 U.S. national team. Like them, Kamara will receive a three-year guarantee in MLS and educational grants that come with the requirement that he continues his education.

Kamara is modest about his talents and accomplishments, and he sees his rise to the professional ranks as only one step in a longer road.

“I don’t know that I’m good yet,” he says. “People give me compliments and I appreciate them. But I’ll see how good I am in the professional leagues. It’s not going to be easy at the next level. It’s going to take a lot of hard work.

“To come to the U.S. and have all this opportunity, to be a professional soccer player, go to college, and get financial aid is so great,” he says. “I’m excited that part of my dream has come true. But not all of it yet. My goal is to play for one of the top leagues in world, and that probably means somewhere in Europe.”

Having come this far, he ought to be able to make it across the Atlantic.

-James Badham