The first time he heard about some lottery to America was in 1994 when he was a younger man simply beginning out, a nurse at a neighborhood hospital in his city of Danane, in his African nation of the Ivory Coast.
“I was so far from the capital, where I had to go, I didn’t have time to apply,” Guy Kohou mentioned.
The subsequent time he thought-about it was greater than a decade later. He went to the United States embassy within the capital of Abidjan and utilized for the green-card lottery. His spouse and two younger kids bought the mandatory medical check-ups and adopted procedures all within the hope, as Kohou mentioned, of, “making a good life for my family.”
He chuckles over the cellphone from exterior Dallas. “That’s how I got to the football game.”
That’s how he watched his son, Kader, make his debut final Sunday as an undrafted Miami Dolphins rookie. It’s how his son’s journey began with that household flight at age 9 out of Africa that his father took out a mortgage to make occur.
There have been extra odds-defying parts to return for Kader: not being recruited out of highschool, direct-messaging a Division II coach on the lookout for gamers and getting a $3,000 grant a yr to attend Texas A&M-Commerce. The college’s price this yr: $23,150.
“I got $500 more a semester my second year, $1,000 more the third year,” he mentioned. “My senior yr I used to be getting $7,500 [a semester].
How a lot does he owe?
“A lot,” he mentioned. “They’re talking of doing financial-aid cancellation. I’m one of those hoping to get some help there.”
It helped that after not enjoying his freshman yr and pondering of quitting — “A friend talked me out of it,” he mentioned — he was voted the Lone Star Conference’s finest defensive again as a senior.
There was delicate NFL curiosity round him. Some groups talked of drafting him. The day earlier than the draft Dolphins defensive coordinator Josh Boyer noticed Kohou on videotape. A Zoom name was instantly arrange.
“I could tell talking to him, he was a no-nonsense guy,” Kohou mentioned of Boyer, “and he wanted to see about putting me in the best situation.”
Boyer detected one thing else in Kohou. He received’t reveal what the trait is, nevertheless it’s not tough to guess: Intelligence. That’s what most against-the-odds gamers have to maximise their bodily presents.
Kohou’s smarts have been apparent to his household from the beginning. He went from first grade to sixth grade in two years. He was in center college at 8 when most children have been 12. A local French-speaker, he lived together with his household in his aunt’s dwelling in Dallas and, “learned to speak English fluently in three months,” his father mentioned.
He rose from being an undrafted free agent the Dolphins signed to being in on 32 % of the performs within the opening win in opposition to New England. In his 18 performs, he had three tackles and a compelled fumble.
“The veterans told me to let the game go as I walked out of the locker room right after it,” Kohou mentioned on Wednesday. “So I’ve let the game go. I’m moving on to the next game.”
“You should gain confidence, but know as a rookie there’s more,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel mentioned. “There’s something going to happen that you’re not going to like. You’re either going to be a little off or something is coming. It’s the nature of the game. … And where are you going to be at when you get beat or somebody makes a play on you for the next play?”
Guy Kohou flew from Dallas to look at his son’s debut, remembering again to the time in Kader mentioned he was quitting basketball as a young person.
“He said, ‘I’m not tall,’ and I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ ” his father said. “He said, ‘I want to play football.’ I said, ‘You are skinny.’ But he said he could play football and one thing I know about Kader: When he puts his mind to something he does it.”
Everyone has a journey. Some odds are simply longer. From the Ivory Coast to Division II to going undrafted, Kohou has received simply by displaying up on Sundays.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com