Nyaz grew up in Baghdad and idolized his older brother, Azad:
“He was the nicest guy you could ever meet. He just wanted to help people.
“He became a translator with the U.S. Army and was on a mission in Fallujah in 2007 when the Humvee he was in hit an IED. The explosion killed him and the five American soldiers with him. He was only 21.”
Nyaz remembered the sadness that overcame his family — “there was a lot of crying” — and then the fear.
“After (ISIS) found out about my brother, they came and said they’d kill us all,” he said. “That’s when we left everything and went to Istanbul, Turkey.”
He was with his mother, brother and two sisters. His dad initially had stayed behind and then came word that he had been kidnapped.
“They contacted my mom and told her if we didn’t come back they were going to kill our dad,” he said. “But she decided not to risk it. She said they planned to kill all of us and eventually my dad got away from them.”
Nyaz said his family struggled in Turkey. They had no money and little food: “Some days we just drank tea.”
When his older sister, Sabir, was diagnosed with a rapidly-spreading form of cancer, the family finally was cleared to come to the U.S. for treatment. But the wait had been too long and Sabir died here. She, too, was just 21.
After Nyaz joined his teammates the other afternoon, Bison coach Julie Raiff added some more to the tale: “He lost a friend, too, who was walking to the store and got blown up by a bomb.
“Kids here (in Dayton) don’t know how lucky they are. They don’t have to worry about being blown up or threatened.”
Out on the field, though, several Belmont players and an assistant coach all had stories of past peril.
“In 2003 we lived in Gambella, Ethiopia and there was a massacre of our Anuk tribe by the government troops,” said Bungire “Kashu” Opothi, a 16-year-old junior forward. “They were looking mostly to kill men and boys.
“I was real young, but I remember we had to leave at midnight. We took a bus to Addis Ababa and then on to South Sudan. We stayed in a refugee camp there for six months and then went to one in Uganda and stayed five years.”
Freshman defender Fabrise Bahoza was born in the Congo, but because of the war his family fled to Burundi, where ethnic strife between the Hutu and Tutsi people was deadly, as well.
“My mom was hurt there,” he said. “People came in the car and broke her arm.”
Assistant coach Ramadhan Ndayisaba — who played football and soccer for Belmont a few years ago after fleeing Burundi and living almost 15 years in a refugee camp in Tanzania — said his grandparents were killed by soldiers back in his homeland.
Several of the players — like senior defender Osama Abusim, who lived in Benghazi, Libya before his family fled to camps in Sudan and then Egypt — lived in refugee enclaves across Africa before finally ending up in Dayton … and in a Belmont soccer uniform.
And that makes the unbeaten Bison the most unique prep sports team in the Miami Valley.
With its English as a Second Language (ESL) curriculum, Belmont draws many of the area’s international students and because of it, the soccer team resembles the United Nations … with cleats.
The current roster includes players from 18 countries and four continents. There are Christians and there are Muslims. There are 21 boys and two girls.
And there is one Love.
The sophomore goalkeeper who grew up in South Africa after being born in the Congo is Mbo Love Kapepula. That’s his real name, not a nickname.
But along with his birth certificate, he has love in his heart since leaving South Africa for a refugee camp in Zimbabwe and finally ending up in Lowell, Massachusetts.
“That was the first place I was welcome,” he said. “I met a teacher there who cared so much for me. She taught me to read and that opened up the world to me.”
After two years he reluctantly moved to Dayton and found himself at Belmont, where there were other immigrant students, but none he knew.
“But I knew we all had one thing in common,” he said. “I knew we had a love of the game of soccer.”
And that’s all that mattered, said senior captain Herbert Chongwain, who came to Dayton with his family from Cameroon five years ago:
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Christian, Jewish or Muslim. No matter who you are, we consider you as a regular human being and we all get together and play a game.”
Shadrack “Michael” Ilunga, a sophomore defender who grew up in South Africa after being born in the Congo, agreed:
“The soccer ball unites us all.”
Bruno and freedom
The success of this season’s 7-0-1 Belmont team has a lot to do with Raiff.
A former University of Dayton soccer player, she’s been a longtime area coach, guiding soccer teams at Stivers, St. Marys and Chaminade Julienne, as well as softball at Alter, Oakwood and Stivers and track at Wilbur Wight.
She took over the Bison program two years ago — her initial squad went 5-2-5 — and said the teams made up of immigrant players have been ‘’honest-to-God blessings for me. They are one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.
“These kids are just so appreciative, so gracious and caring and beautiful that…you…aaah…you…”
Her voice trailed off and the emotion welled up and even though she looked down, she couldn’t hide the tears that filled her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks.
“It’s not easy for these kids,” she finally said in a whisper. “They wander through a building with 1,100 students and they get overlooked because some don’t speak very good English or they’re shy or just different. They just want the chance to be like the other kids.”
That process, though, can be rough, said Chongwain, whose younger brother Herman is one of the team’s stalwarts, as well:
“Middle school was tough. My accent was thicker and people used to mock the way I talked. And they made fun of the way I dressed, too. I used to wear old-fashioned stuff and out-of-style stuff because we had no money.”
Yet, as they say, clothes don’t make the man.
That was never more evident last season than when Bibebibyo Seko, then a 10th-grader new from Mozambique, showed up one game into the season.
“He was small and wearing madras shorts,” Raiff laughed. “But what a player he’s turned out to be. He’s become a Steady Eddie. He plays all 80 minutes as a stopper.”
Even more impressive is his linguistic skill. Most of the players speak multiple languages, but he speaks six and doubles as the team interpreter.
Like other players, he also gets tasked with field maintenance.
Belmont soccer is short on amenities, so the players — as they’ve had to do all their lives — adjust.
The field was constructed on top of fill dirt, Raiff said, and that means there are rocks everywhere. She keeps five-gallon containers in her SUV and she and her players have spent plenty of time digging out rocks by the bucket full.
And the other day Herbert Chongwain’s red stocking-clad toes stuck out of holes in the front of his cleats. But a day later, thanks to Raiff, the shoes were at least duct-taped shut.
She tries to make everything right for her team. Although she won’t tell you this, others will. When players have needed clothes or equipment, she’s bought it out of her own pocket.
She gives many of the players rides home each night and after an especially tough loss last year, she took the disconsolate bunch to the Hickory Bar-B-Q for burgers.
“When the plates came, they couldn’t believe how big they were.” she said. “They said, ‘Coach, is this all for us? At home we would all share one plate.’
“When I heard that, I was packing up the bread and the butter and the next day a kid came up to me and said, ‘My sister really liked the butter.’ That makes you appreciate what’s going on here.”
She once took Opothi to the UDF for ice cream.
“They had all these kinds and he had never tasted any of them and by the end they’d given him a dozen little tasting spoons,” Raiff said. “He finally chose rainbow, but when we got in the car I saw he wasn’t eating it. That’s when I realized he was bringing it home for his whole family to try. So we went back in and got a half gallon.”
It may seem like a small gesture, but things like that weren’t possible for many of these athletes who were in refugee camps.
“Life in them was not good,” said Jacques Kagiraneza, a freshman midfielder who was born in a camp in Rwanda. “There wasn’t a lot of food. It was dusty and crowded. The schools weren’t good. The water was bad. People would get sick. And you know in America how a restroom might be clean? Those were not.”
Several of the players now smile when they think of their initial dreams about America.
“In Libya, I knew about Beyonce and 50 Cent and Lil Wayne and Michael Jackson,” Abusim said. “All Africans know Michael Jackson.”
Ahmed Sied, a freshman midfielder from Eritrea who ended up in camps in Sudan and Ethiopia before coming to the U.S. eight months ago, equated one person with America: “Muhammad Ali.”
As for Bereket Gebre, a sophomore forward who came to Dayton seven months ago after being born in Eritrea and then living in Ethiopia, when he thought of America, he said thought of things like “Bruno Mars…and freedom.”
He nodded and repeated:
“Yes…freedom.”
‘We’re of one heart’
Seven years ago assistant coach Ramadhan Ndayisaba went through the same experience the newest Bison players are going through.
He struggled to adjust to Belmont, but then was “discovered” by then-assistant football coach Jackie Fails, who had been told there was a new kid who could really kick.
Fields found him, handed him a ball and watched the first kick sail across the school. The next one landed on the roof and instantly a star was born.
Ndayisaba was dubbed “African Gold” by another coach and for three years he played several sports at the school. After graduating in 2012, he got a building attendant’s job at the downtown courthouse and enrolled at Sinclair Community College, where he studied criminal justice.
He wants to be a police officer.
“I see it as a way to help make the community a better place to live,” he said.
What he’s most proud of is that he became a United States citizen after high school.
“Oh man, it was amazing,” he grinned. “I was able to shake hands with the judge, but the best thing is to know I’m part of the community. I have the papers to prove I’m a real American.”
He’s passing on some of his insight to the current Bison:
“I’ve been in their shoes, so I tell them to stay focused and have a goal.”
And many of them do
“My dream is to go to college and do international studies so one day I can work with the international community to help solve the immigrant crisis and deal with the hunger issues and all the bad things happening to refugees all over the world,” Opothi said. “That’s my dream because once that was me and I needed help and someone was there.”
Abusim has a similar lofty goal:
“I hope to become a mechanical engineer or maybe a lawyer and one day go back to my country (Sudan) and run for president. I want to change my country for real and make it more like the United States.”
When you listen to these Belmont players, you get pictures of refugees that are the complete opposite of the one offered by certain xenophobic politicians today and their followers who try to demonize immigrants and paint them in the darkest of terms.
“That’s really unfair,” said midfielder Bruce Anthony, who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Ghana and whose family, like many others, came to Dayton and found jobs thanks to the Catholic Social Services Resettlement Program. “People come here because they heard America is a good place to live, a place where if you work hard and dream, you can be part of a better life.”
Ibrahim, whose brother was killed by ISIS, explained further:
“People look at a few people who do things and think it means the whole religion. Like how ISIS claims to be Muslims and says all the killing is OK. Islam is a peaceful religion and we try to do peaceful things.”
Isabella Danhoui, a senior midfielder who was born in Togo and raised in Ghana, is one of the two girls on the team:
“I think many people have never been close to immigrants so they don’t understand them. I wish they would get close to me so I could show them who I am. Who we all are. We’re all human.”
The Bison’s other girl, senior defender Brianna Brake, is the only America-born player and she summed it up best:
“If people came out here and saw what these boys can do and how they’re acting, they’d see it’s way different than everybody says. It doesn’t matter where we’re all from, we’re of one heart. They’re my brothers and my sister and I’ll forever be with them.”
The players’ biggest defender is Raiff:
“I can’t imagine what it feels like to some of these kids when they hear some of that talk. A lot of them weren’t even welcome in their own country and then they come here and get targeted. These kids just want an opportunity to be a good teammate and to become an American.”
Later, when he heard what his coach had said, it was Abusim who melted:
“Our coach is a wonderful person. She’s like our second mother and we love her. She’s the person who sees who we really are….”
And suddenly his voice began to waver and he brought his hand up in front of his eyes and quietly he began to weep.
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