By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN — The trip was a long one for Soraya Asiene-Ogebar, roughly 5,600 miles.
It’s a long way to go to play basketball.
And it’s a longer way to go when you’re told you didn’t make it.
That’s how it happened for Ogebar, a kid who just wouldn’t take no for an answer.
He simply changed sports to football, and this spring is an imposing figure as an aspiring tight end of Coach Bill Stewart’s team.
Ogebar is from Lagos, Nigeria, and was trying to follow a dream.
No, make that he was trying to follow “The Dream”, as in Hakeem “The Dream” Olajuwon, who went from Lagos to Houston, where he was a key figure in “Phi Slamma Jama”, and then on to a Hall of Fame career in the NBA.
Ogebar had been a good basketball player in Lagos as a high school player and as part of the Toronto Raptors Basketball Club, good enough to believe that he could follow “The Dream”. He studied the colleges here, with help from two sisters attending American University in Washington, D.C.
Ogebar thought he could play at West Virginia, and came to America to attend the school in December 2007, shortly after WVU’s football team had been stunned by Pitt. However, two tryouts for Bob Huggins’ Final Four basketball team ended in disappointment for the 6-foot-5, 246-pound Nigerian.
“The first time I tried out I did not do real well,” he said. “I only had one day to prove myself. The second time, I was already on the football team. And I didn’t put that much effort into it. I already was a walk-on in football.”
A serious student trying to become an industrial engineer, this son of a importer of beauty products business-owner in Lagos decided he’d give football a try after a friend from his home country suggested he had the right tools.
He began working out in the Shell Building, aware his conditioning hurt him in the basketball tryout, working on his speed.
“I had not played football before I came,” he admitted. “Coach Stewart decided to give me a chance. I will do what I can to help the team.”
His previous football experience amounted to watching some on television. He wasn’t really familiar with the game, although Kansas City Chiefs running back Christian Okoye gave the game some popularity in his home country of Nigeria.
Coming to Morgantown was, of course, something of a culture shock, but not as you may picture it.
It was almost like the kids who come here from New York City, Lagos being a seaport of about 8 million people, the second largest city in all of Africa to only Cairo, Egypt.
“Mostly it was little things,” Ogebar said when asked about the cultural adjustments.
As is usually the case, the food was different. “I was used to eating starchy, spicy stuff,” he said.
There are no pepperoni rolls in Nigeria.
Certainly, there was much to learn for Ogebar.
And there wasn’t a whole lot of time to learn it. He is 21, and a junior, although he says that in football terms he is a redshirt freshman.
They have him at tight end, and he is a physical specimen there and believes he also possesses the tools to play the position.
“A lot of basketball stuff translates to tight end,” he said. That includes having to have good hands to catch the ball in both sports.
Learning a new game on the fly, however, is not easy.
“I’m trying to absorb as much as possible,” he said. “I’m learning to love it, but some days, when I don’t get things right, it gets to me.”
Somewhere, of course, the dream of becoming “The Dream” remains strong.
“Basketball was my life, all I talked about,” he said.
And, when West Virginia played Duke in the Final Four, he was watching.
“It was so sad,” he said. “I almost cried.”
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
