USU Track Star Recounts His Path from Namibia to Logan

I grew up in a beautiful city called Windhoek; it has a population of about 223,364 residents. Windhoek is the capital city of Namibia.

 

"Windhoek is a very beautiful place, I had the opportunity to go on safaris, visit the Namibian desert and meet with Bushman people, which was a wonderful experience," said Kenneth Andam from Provo.

Growing up in a family of six very athletic kids was really fun to be a part of, but being the youngest and having to live up to look up to your older siblings cause you wanted to be just like them wasn't too easy. All four of my older brothers were very active in sports. Three of them played soccer and one of them played soccer and ran track.

 

Growing up in a country were most children never think of making it to college was really unfortunate. I knew my parents couldn't afford to send me to college, so I never dreamed about going to college after high school. I wasn't sure what I was going to do after graduating high school, but since I played soccer through out primary school and high school, I thought I'd just find a job after high school in order to help my parents and to play for a local soccer league because I loved the game.

 

During my senior year of high school, one of my older brothers who had earned himself a track and field scholarship from BYU talked me into running track for my last year in school, just to see what kind of speed was lurking within me. I knew I had some speed on the soccer field but I wasn't sure that it was track speed.

 

Back in Windhoek, kids run barefoot and I knew nothing about track shoes like spikes and what they were for. Our annual track meet for my high school rolled by and I asked one my classmates who ran track on a regular basis to borrow his spikes. I entered myself in the 400m dash, surprisingly I ended up winning the race and running a 49 seconds headheld 400m time.

 

"I always thought my younger brother was talented, but I had no clue he could run that fast at that young age, and I'm really proud of him" said BYU graduate and brother Thobias Akwenye.

 

My brother was really happy with the time, that he referred me to one of his sprint coaches at BYU. They ended up recruiting me right after high school, which was a big accomplishment for me. I had no knowledge about BYU or Utah. All I knew was that they were somewhere in America, and BYU was where my brother went to school, and that BYU was also school to Frankie Fredricks, our country's national hero and two-time Olympic silver medallist in the 200m.

 

There I was, this 18-year-old high school graduate, first time away from home, and going to a place thousands of miles away in unfamiliar grounds. My parents were really proud of me, because they knew they couldn't afford to send me to college no matter how they wanted to see their son go to school. They really wanted me to do something with life after high school.

 

Upon completing high school, I went on a recruiting trip to BYU and Utah Valley State College, but I felt so comfortable with the atmosphere at UVSC that I accepted their scholarship offer. Within my first two years at UVSC I ran so well that I started getting offers from major universities around the country, and my country Namibia started inviting me to national meets around world like the World University Games in Turkey, Common Wealth Games, and The All Africa Games.

 

All these windows to great opportunities started opening up for me. UVSC was just a junior college, after two years I looked into transferring to to different bigger institutions. Offers to a number of university ranging from Northern Colorado, San Francisco State, Southern Utah, Weber State and BYU started coming in. I considered Utah State University out of the bunch because I liked the coaches, the program, and the teammates that I was going to have.

 

I'm in my senior year of track and field right now. I'm about to reach one of my dreams, which is to graduate, in the spring of 2006, and yet another dream is to represent my country at the Olympics in 2008 or in 2012. I have a really wounderful sprint coach that helps me in every way possible, and he teaches me a lot of new things about track and field that I never knew about.

 

"Dasheek has great talent and he possesses the quality of desire which will propel him to a future appearance for Namibia in the 2008 Olympics," said USU sprint coach Croft.

 

Injuries have become a serious problem within my track career, having torn my hamstrings twice and my quad once. I'm praying for a healthy senior year, in order to showcase my talent to my fullest potential.