Taonga Mbambo has had his first year at university in the United States cut short by the coronavirus outbreak. Photo suppliedWhile an injury might have de-railed his rookie cross country season in the United States, runner Taonga Mbambo could have never expected a global pandemic would bring it to an early end.

The former Ashburton College student has been on an academic and athletic scholarship to La Salle University in Philadelphia.

Mbambo arrived back in New Zealand last week and has been in self-isolation since then.

“It has been pretty boring self-isolating since Sunday and not being allowed to leave my room,” he said.

He first left for the United States in August and returned over Christmas and headed back across the Pacific at the start of this year.

The first semester consisted of the cross country season, which after a promising start came to an early end after Mbambo was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his shin less than a week out from their conference championships.

“My team went on to win the conference championships so that was disappointing not to be able to be a part of that,” he said.

One of Mbambo’s best results was finishing 32nd at an event in New York which showed just how much higher the level of competition is in the United States.

“I finished second out of the freshman in the event and if I ran that time at the New Zealand Champs for my age grade I would’ve won which is crazy that I only finished 32nd,” he said.

Mbambo said the cross country courses were fairly similar to those in New Zealand, with most races being run on golf courses in the United States.

Based in the north-east of the country, he competed in events in New York, Rhode Island, Virginia.

“We do travel round a bit and there are lots of opportunities,” he said.

“Some athletes in our programme got to go to North Carolina and Boston to compete and we were going to get the opportunity to go to Florida for an event but the virus stopped that.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the second semester, which consists of indoor track events followed by outdoor track events.

The 19-year-old said he feels he is strongest competing in cross country at the moment, with limited experience in the other two area, especially indoor racing.

“We have no indoor tracks here in New Zealand and it is a completely different experience,” he said.

“You can’t breathe and the track is 200m shorter than outdoors so the racing is a lot more tactical so I’ve got a bit of learning to do there.”

With La Salle University closed like most colleges in the United States, Mbambo is finishing the rest of the semester online, and all going well will return to Philadelphia for his second year.

“Since I got injured in the cross country season in my first year and can get medically excused and so while I’ll be a year older and in my second year I will still be able to race as a rookie,” Mbambo said.

“Hopefully I will be able to win rookie of year for my conference and the team can win the conference championships again.”

Each college has a team of 10 runners, with the best seven finishing runners from each team getting points for their team based on where they finished.

From the conference finals they move the regional finals before progressing to the nationals.

Mbambo said he would love to qualify for the nationals at least once in his time at La Salle.

Mbambo was born in Zambia and moved to New Zealand with his family when he was seven years old.

The family lived in Dunedin for the first seven years and moved to Ashburton around five years ago.

By Jaime Pitt-MacKay © The Ashburton Guardian - 30 March 2020