Taonga Mbambo is off to university in America on an athletics scholarship. Photo Erin TaskerHe made a name for himself as a long distance runner here, but soon Taonga Mbambo will be footing it with some of America’s best.

Erin Tasker reports.

When it came to deciding where in the world athletics would take him next, Taonga Mbambo was spoiled for choice.

The 18-year-old former Ashburton College student – who has made a name for himself as both a long distance and cross-country runner – had four American universities approach him, wanting him on their athletics teams.

But one stood out above the rest, and that was La Salle University in Philadelphia, and in a couple of months Mbambo will pack his bags and board a plane bound for America, and the university that he will call home for the next four years, God willing.

La Salle is a private Christian university which was founded in 1863, and it is a National College Athletic Association (NCAA) division one school – the highest level of inter-collegiate athletics in the USA.

When Mbambo was in Denmark for the IAAF World Cross Country Championships last year, La Salle’s athletics coach approached Mbambo and spoke to him, and it was that personal contact which led to him deciding on La Salle as the place he wanted to study and compete out of.

La Salle offered Mbambo an academic and athletics scholarship which will start in August, and as the days tick down, Mbambo is a mixture of nerves and excitement.

It is hard to believe how far he had come in such a short time. Mbambo’s running career only started a couple of years ago, when he decided that after years of playing football he wanted a change.

He started running, and while he wouldn’t call himself a natural, found he loved it.

“It’s been a fun road, but it’s also been a long road,” Mbambo said.

Giving up football, which he loved, had been hard but it is a decision that he doesn’t regret.

He’d played football since he and his family moved to New Zealand from their native Zambia 11 years ago, when he was just seven years old. The family lived in Dunedin for the first seven years and moved to Ashburton four years ago.

Pretty much all Mbambo remembered, was life in New Zealand. He has few memories of life in Zambia, and leaving all he knew behind was daunting, but the move to America was something he knew he had to do.

It is a goal he’s had for a long time, and now that the dream is about to become a reality he is determined to live it, and make the most of every opportunity that comes his way.

“It’s like passing a test I already knew I was going to pass,” Mbambo said.

Although he’ll be living on the other side of the world, Mbambo still wants to represent New Zealand if selected for future cross-country and long distance track events, which would be his specialty at La Salle. He’ll run cross-country in the fall and winter, before moving to the track – both indoors and outdoors – over summer.

When it comes to his studies, Mbambo hopes to study business management or sports psychology, and maybe even do a double major. While he wants to go as far as he can with his running, he also knew the importance of an education.

Ideally, the Mbambos had been looking for a smaller university in a smaller city, so that Mbambo didn’t get lost in the crowd academically. They got half of what they were looking for.

La Salle is a smaller university, with only around 4000 undergrad students, but it is in a big city.

It has proven to be the perfect fit for the family, though.

Mbambo has put in the hard yards over the years, and at La Salle he’ll only go from strength to strength, literally. There will be so many opportunities to race, and the kinds of facilities many could only dream about at his disposal.

Until he leaves, he will continue to go to Timaru every week to train with his coach Craig Motley, who Mbambo said he was grateful to for everything he’d done to enhance his talent, to ensure he hits the ground running when he arrives in the US.

Mbambo said he is also grateful to the wider Ashburton community for the support and encouragement he’s received over the years, and particularly those from the St David’s Church community.

His mantra is ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’, from Philippians 4:13, and Mbambo’s father Henry – the minister at St David’s – is confident that his upbringing would set him in good stead for the future.

By Erin Tasker© The Ashburton Guardian - 15 June 2019