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African refugee's kicking skills a lucky break for Belmont

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Ramadhan Ndayisaba, born in Burundi, Africa, is now the kicker for the Belmont High School football team. Ndayisaba, lived in the Congo and Tanzania, is now a Daytonian helping Belmont score against their competitors.

Teesha McClam/Dayton Daily News Ramadhan Ndayisaba, born in Burundi, Africa, is now the kicker for the Belmont High School football team. Ndayisaba, lived in the Congo and Tanzania, is now a Daytonian helping Belmont score against their competitors.

By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 12:38 AM Friday, October 2, 2009

John Derr has been around a long time — he’s coached prep football for a quarter century at eight different schools across the Miami Valley and in Florida — and yet he’s never experienced anything like this.

“You ever see that movie, 'The Natural?’ ” asked the Belmont coach as he sat in the school’s cramped football office. “You know, where somebody just walks in off the street? Well, that’s kind of what Rahm’s story is. Like something straight out of the movies.”

Just as The Natural’s Roy Hobbs shattered the scoreboard lights with a mammoth home run, Ramadhan Ndayisaba showed he has a knack for the spectacular, as well.

“I took a football to track practice because they said this kid could kick,” said Jackie Fails, Belmont’s track coach and an assistant football coach. “I’d seen him just dance with a soccer ball, but I didn’t know about kicking. I tossed him the ball and said, 'Let me see you kick, man.’ ”

The recollection made Fails grin: “BOOM, he kicked it over that (three-story) school building over there. So I go, 'Can you do that again?’ He just nodded and BOOM, this time he kicked the ball real high and it landed on the school roof.

“I was shocked and I remember saying, 'Man, you done lost the ball.’ Right then I knew we’d found ourselves a kicker.”

Derr remembers Fails hustling into the locker room, saying: “Coach, you got to come look at the African kid. He can kick the crap out of the ball.”

“When I got there, I saw he not only could kick, but he could do it with either leg. He’s ambidextrous. And he can kick on the run. He’s an athlete. Instantly he made our kicking game 10 times more versatile than it ever was.”

In the past three years, Belmont has gone 2-8, 2-8 and then last year, with Derr sidelined first by hip replacement surgery, then a broken leg, the under-manned Bison went 0-9.

“Don’t you think I deserve a little luck?” Derr chuckled. “I’ve never had anything like this happen to me, but God can’t constantly keep kicking me in the head. I think he finally said, 'Here John, you deserve a break.’ ”

Fleeing civil war

It’s almost as if Ramadhan finally got the same message, as well.

In 1993 — the year after he was born in Burundi — his nation erupted in civil war after Melchior Ndadaye, the leader of the Hutu party, won the country’s first-ever democratic election and promptly was assassinated by Tutsi soldiers.

Parliament elected another Hutu to the presidency and immediately he and the Rwanda president were killed when their plane was shot down.

The ethnic violence that lasted for more than a decade cost at least 300,000 lives in Burundi and displaced two million people.

Ramadhan’s family fled briefly to Congo and then Tanzania, where he lived in a refugee camp most of the first 15 of his 17 years. He said his grandparents stayed behind in Burundi and “were killed by the soldiers.”

Life in the camp, he said, was “real bad. It was crowded. There was fighting. People worried about the war (back home).”

When he, his parents, two older brothers and younger sister — with the help of an aid group — finally were brought to the United States, he said they came to Dayton.

None of the family spoke English — though Ramadhan spoke six other languages — and they knew little about everyday life in the United States.

“I knew about 50 Cent, Eminem, Beyonce ... and Arnold,” he said.

Arnold?

He nodded: “In California, the governor. He’s got a lot of movies.”

The family flew into Dayton on a wintry January day and Ramadhan remembers being instantly perplexed:

“It was cold and the ground was all white. It looked like sugar. I said, 'What’s going on here? Where is this from?’ And they said, 'The sky.’ It was snow time.”

Once he got in front of a TV, he said he was puzzled again when he saw an NFL playoff game:

“I said, 'What kind of game is this?’ I had never seen it before. There’s nothing like it in Africa. They told me it is called football. And I asked if I could try playing this football.”

Carving his niche

With the help of Fails — who picked him up and brought him back to his North Main Street home each day — Ramadhan worked on his kicking over the summer.

At the same time, he learned English — through Belmont’s English as a Second Language classes and banter with his teammates — and thanks to both the lingo and his strong legs, he’s begun to carve out his niche in his new country.

“He was a little sketchy with rules at first,” smiled teammate Nathan Henderson, who likely was referring to the Greenon game when Ramadhan decided to run the ball out of the end zone rather than punt. He was promptly tackled on the 2-yard line and Greenon quickly scored.

But as he’s grasped some of the complexities of the game — while kicking a field goal and five extra points for his under-manned 1-4 team — he’s also become a bit of a legend.

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