Lincoln East sophomore very savvy soccer player

BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star

The little boys couldn't have known what was beneath the land they were running on.

All the boys in the Ogoni Tribe could know was that a ball was before them and kicking it was required, because that's what you do when you are a 5-year-old Nigerian boy.

Soccer is breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Lincoln East sophomore Badum Maaloo can attest to this because he was one of those little boys chasing a ball on oil-rich land. He was part of that tribe, the one that had been  in eastern Nigeria for more than 500 years, only to be uprooted by an oil company with a shell logo.

"It was like they forced you to move out or you die," says Nale Maaloo, Badum's mother.

So the Maaloos fled to a refugee camp in Benin, Nigeria, where father Precious had been preparing for his family to settle. But in Benin, the people speak French. And the Maaloos don't speak French.

The food was unusual and the setting was cramped. If you needed to use the bathroom, you walked outside to a community one.

For 31 months the family lived there. It ended when the hope of immigrating to America was realized. They were informed that Lincoln's First-Plymouth Congregational Church would help sponsor their settlement in Nebraska.

The family arrived on ...

"July 1, 1999," Badum remembers without a blink.

"I didn't even know what pizza was. The first time I tried it, I didn't like it at all. ... And like every family had cars and every little kid had bikes. In my country, it's hard to get bikes and stuff like that."

Says Nale: "I didn't know they even had snow in this world until here."

While the differences were many, some things were found to be universal. Some of those are greater and some smaller.

But this one is greater to Badum: It seems that no matter where you go in this world, there are always boys chasing a ball to kick.

And Badum can play that game as well as most any high school sophomore.

On Saturday, he'll wear No. 8 for East as the Spartans begin play in the Class A State Soccer Tournament against Omaha Westside.

East senior Mike Johnson, a Super-State forward, is just thankful Badum's on his side.

"He is such a raw athlete. He's one of the best athletes on the field no matter who we're going to play," Johnson says. "I think soccer-wise he's better than when I was a sophomore. I pretty much got my success in soccer just by working hard and he's such a better natural soccer player than I ever was."

Badum has six goals this season for the 12-2 Spartans, who take the top seed into the tournament.

When asked about the differences in American and Nigerian soccer, Badum says: "Here, they work harder and stuff like that. Back there, no one cares if you go all-out and everything like that. Here, you have to go all-out."

There are several stereotypes given to Nigerian soccer players, but among the good ones is that they can do things with a soccer ball that don't seem conceivable to players from other countries.

East coach Jeff Hoham believes Badum has some of those characteristics. He thinks the sophomore carries the ball to goal as well as anyone at his level.

"He's very savvy with the ball. He can make something out of nothing on a field," Hoham says.

Off the field, Badum is just as savvy.

He's got this great smile, Johnson says. And he's always got a joke or a friendly word to say.

And Johnson's a senior and, by some dumb rule created a long time ago, seniors are supposed to be tough on sophomores. ...

But here's the senior saying about the sophomore: "It's hard not to like the kid."