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Hard work puts UD soccer star on path to pro career

Dayton's Isaac Kissi controls the ball against Wright State xxxxxxxx po[ds [fpo dsf[ sd[fpo d[spof [dso fpsd[po f[dpso fpodspf[ osdp[f [sdopf [sdo pfp[. Contributed photo by Erik Schelkun

ENLARGE PHOTO

UD star follows dream from Ghana to pro soccer league

By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 4:59 PM Monday, January 25, 2010

To understand the panic he felt that day on the University of Dayton campus — the sense that all had been lost — you need to know how he ended up there in the first place.

In the summer of 2007 — back home in Accra, Ghana — Isaac Kissi knew very little about this new country he was about to come to and nothing about the University of Dayton, except:

• The school was offering him a way to honor his parents’ insistence that he get an education, a demand that had scuttled offers as a teen to join the youth academies of pro teams in Holland, Qatar and London.

• He’d have an opportunity to play NCAA Division I soccer.

• He’d have a chance to play on the “very green pitch” of Baujan Field, which he’d seen only in a photograph after getting access to a computer at an Internet cafe in his city.

For Kissi, that patch of UD green was like the yellow brick road that far-from-home Dorothy traversed in the “Wizard of Oz.”

Growing up in poverty in a rough section of Accra — “in the streets” is the way UD soccer coach Dennis Currier put it — Kissi said he played his soccer “on stones and cinders. ... Some of my mates played barefoot. At first we made our balls from a bunch of socks we wadded together until they were round.”

As he got better and advanced to high school, he said his mother — a trader selling bags in a teeming, open-air markets in Accra — sold off her own jewelry to make sure he had two pairs of soccer cleats.

Kissi said former UD assistant coach Paul Souders was on an African recruiting trip, spotted him playing midfield for a ragtag club team at the University of Ghana and offered a scholarship.

Though he knew no one here, Kissi chose Dayton and arrived with big dreams and a meager nest egg of $600, funds his parents, family members and friends had taken months to collect for him.

But once in Dayton, it took him less than eight weeks to lose it all. It’s a story that still pains him to tell:

“I was walking to class one day and all of a sudden I realized my wallet wasn’t in my pocket. When I got home, I spent the whole night looking for it, but it was gone. It had all of the $600 still in it. When I’d gotten here, I wouldn’t spend it.

“I panicked and cried for three days. I just shut down. I never told my parents because they’d have gotten extra sad. But I thought of quitting and going home. I thought my dream might be over.

“Then I just started praying to God, hoping somehow, something would work out.”

Though it wasn’t easy — in fact, he has had a college experience unlike that of any Flyers athlete now on scholarship — Isaac Kissi can finally say his prayers have been answered.

He graduated from UD in December.

Ten days ago he was picked in the third round of the Major League Soccer draft by Chivas USA, which is based in Carson, Calif.

And Saturday, Jan. 23, he left for the West Coast to begin a pro career he calls “an unbelievable dream come true.”

Rough start at UD

During his 17-year career as a college head coach, Currier has had some African players who really blossomed when they got to the U.S. That’s why he’d sent his assistant to Ghana three summers ago and how Kissi was first noticed.

“These were more like club teams playing on a dirt field,” Currier said. “And you might see anything happen. Right in the middle of the game where Isaac was playing, a herd of goats walked across the field and no one blinked an eye.

“A half hour later, a work shift ended at a nearby building and all the workers walked across the field as the game was going on.

“But through it all, Isaac had a presence on the field, He was raw, but very powerful and the other players were drawn to him.”

Although he came from a very poor area, Kissi said his parents insisted he, his brother and two sisters get an education:

“All my parents talked about was school. They said knowledge was the one thing no one could ever take away from me. I’ve learned that now, but, at first, I just did the school thing for them.”

Although he also had an offer from Lindsey Wilson College, an NAIA school in Kentucky, he chose Dayton sight unseen.

“I had bettered my English by watching (action) moves — Van Damme, Chuck Norris and Aaaar-nold,” he said with a grin. “And I had listened to music. Hip hop — Young Jeezy, Jay Z and Lil Wayne — some jazz and country.”

Country?

“Oh, yeah, my dad used to have a Kenny Rogers CD. I know all the songs.”

But two months — and one lost wallet — after getting to UD, he was singing the blues, until his teammates and their families lent a helping hand. And in the process, he discovered his own backbone.

“When parents of some of my teammates visited, they got me groceries, too,” he said. “And then I went out and got a job and I’ve worked all three years I’ve been here.”

One of the few UD scholarship athletes working a regular campus job, he spent a year in housekeeping, cleaning other students’ dorm rooms and later worked with UD’s Campus Planning’s environmental heath and safety department, doing everything from computer work to hauling bio hazards from the labs.

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