On this blog, we often talk about the life-saving work that IIA, our partners, and the greater Akron community do every day to help refugees settle into their new home. Starting over in a new country is never easy, but the fact that our community is always there to embrace new residents with open arms, a hot meal, and an offer of friendship means the world.
One way we bond is over the shared passion of organized sports. Immigrants and refugees are increasingly reaching the elite levels of U.S. sports in ways that may seem surprising, given the sports’ identification with U.S. culture.
In fact, all this shows is that we have more in common than our differences.
Did you know 34% of Minor League Baseball players in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan are immigrants, in contrast to 5% of the populations there? In “The Changing Face of Sport, Ozy points out, America’s national pastime “plays a major role in building bridges between rural communities that are overwhelmingly white and people from other cultures.”
IIA was so excited when Emmanuel Rugamba became the first Rwandan-American in the National Football League, signing with our beloved Cleveland Browns. Rugamba was born in a refugee camp in Zambia and came to the U.S. with his mother at the age of three. After playing college football for the University of Iowa and Miami University, Rugamba signed with the Browns as a free agent. When the news broke, he tweeted, “THE LIL BOY BORN IN A REFUGEE CAMP JUST BECAME A CLEVELAND BROWN!!!!!!!”
Sadly, Rugamba has since been waived by the Browns and became a free agent once again. But he has a bright future ahead of him and we will be watching him succeed!
ESPN called Kwity Paye “the NFL’s most extraordinary prospect,” and he was a first-round (number 21) draft pick for the Indianapolis Colts in 2021. Coming to the U.S. as a baby and a refugee from Liberia, Paye hopes to use his NFL platform to uplift the immigrant experience and the need for immigration law reform.
The Olympic Refugee Team has helped educate the world about displaced people, giving them positive visibility on the international stage. Masomah Alizada fled from Afghanistan to France with her family in 2017 after she and her cycling friends were threatened by the Taliban. She joined the Olympic Refugee Team “to show all the men who thought that cycling isn't a women's thing, that I have made it all the way through to the Olympics. And if I can do it, any woman who wants to be involved in cycling, they can do it, from any country, like Afghanistan.”
In the 2020 Tokyo Games, which took place in 2021, 29 athletes from 11 different countries of origin competed in 12 sports as diverse as cycling, weightlifting, flatwater kayaking, and badminton. But the organization is also drawing controversy, over funding not making its way to the athletes and a perceived effort to deny them agency.
Photo used with permission from Akron North Athletics Department.
Here in Akron, there’s no question that former refugees and immigrants—and U.S. born Americans—look up to the aforementioned sports heroes and aspire to be like them one day. At North High School alone, half the student body is made up of young people who came to the U.S. as refugees. According to the district website, “1,800 of our students have a language other than English as their first language; and 45 different languages are now spoken in Akron Public Schools.” These cultures and languages are represented on the men’s and women’s soccer teams, for example.
As former men’s coach Michael Kane explained: “Soccer is called the world sport. You don’t necessarily need to speak to play.”
Now led by Head Coach Emily Johnson, the men’s team won the Akron City series this year, and plays the first game of the postseason on October 20th at Boardman.
Photo used with permission from Akron North Athletics Department.