asfenvip.blogg.se

1. #Bwana sounders how to#
2. #Bwana sounders professional#
3. #Bwana sounders free#

The team fought incredibly hard to get 3 points. Being able keep having faith in God and working so hard to be where Iam today. As he alluded in the tweet below, the vindication is not his alone.įrom walking six miles everyday to get water to scoring my first MLS goal. He’s a charming kid with a bright smile and great potential, and he gave a glimpse of it on a big stage. The sociable teenager who once sat alone at lunch because he didn’t trust his command of his new language found himself engulfed by beaming teammates. It was hard not to feel happy for him in the moment he wheeled away from goal in celebration. Every time he gets pushed to the brink, he finds a way. That’s part of what makes his ongoing story compelling, no matter where it goes from here. He took his chance like a cool-headed vet. He might have been marginally offside, but few in Cascadia are going to quibble. Where he looked tentative and unsure of himself over the past month, on Wednesday night he was more decisive, and grew into the game. Bwana proved his coach right, and not just by scoring the winner. Maybe Bwana is the type of player who raises his game for the grandest occasions-such as the nationally televised contest between the last two MLS champs in a game Seattle was expected to lose badly. That was the rookie’s best game of the year to date, “and it wasn’t too big for him,” Schmetzer said in a phone interview on Wednesday morning. Asked about Bwana’s waning confidence, and his place in the depth chart, Schmetzer harkened back to his performance against Chivas in the first leg of their Champions League quarterfinal. His coach, though, had a good feeling about Wednesday night. Even in an attack in desperate need of a player with Bwana’s specific skill set, he appeared to be getting edged out of the rotation.Īgain, his situation looked tenuous. The last few weeks, though, he had fallen out of favor. The 18-year-old scored in each of Seattle’s first two preseason matches, and started three of the first four regular season games. Nor has Bwana’s first season with the Sounders been entirely on a smooth, upward trajectory. “There were a couple of times when I had him,” one of his club coaches once told me, “where if he makes the wrong decision, goes down the wrong path, hangs out with the wrong crowd and decides not to show up, everything he aspires for could have been lost.” So many people in his situation fail to make it. His talent was always obvious, but even up until recently, he walked a fine line, without much of a safety net if ever he were to fall. He would show up late to out-of-town club soccer tournaments, and only barely met academic requirements to play at the University of Washington-he was declared NCAA eligible mere weeks before the Huskies opened training camp his freshman year. Overwhelmed, and sometimes daydreaming about the freedom of Kakuma, where life was at least simple even if it was hard, Bwana bucked against authority.

#Bwana sounders how to#

At school, it took him two whole months just to figure how to open his locker. As the eldest son of an immigrant mother scrambling just to get by, Handwalla was the one in charge of setting up rent and utility payments. The bus schedule was a confounding blur of numbers and names. Everything in the United States was new and bewildering. Though his family was grateful to be resettled in the United States in 2010 after six years at Kakuma, in Kenya, departing the refugee camp meant leaving friends and family behind. Game ball goes to for his first MLS goal and the game-winner! ? /xa8twVpFJM

His is a story of struggle and sacrifice, a story of setbacks punctured by the occasional cathartic breakthrough. To edit Bwana’s journey down only to the highlights, however, would miss part of what made Wednesday night so special. Juxtapose a few images of a six-year-old Handwalla playing soccer barefoot on the red dirt of the Kakuma refugee camp with the clip of coach Brian Schmetzer awarding him the game ball in the visiting locker room at BMO Field, and the script writes itself.

#Bwana sounders professional#

The rookie’s first professional goal held up as the game-winner in a 2-1 Seattle victory that was as crucial, and unlikely, as any in recent memory. Acting on instinct, Bwana hit Will Bruin’s through-ball past onrushing TFC goalkeeper Alex Bono and into the back of the net.

#Bwana sounders free#

In the 54th minute of a tied game, a rematch of the last two MLS Cup finals, the child refugee turned teenage Sounder broke free behind Toronto FC’s defense. If Handwalla Bwana’s cinematic life story ever makes it to the big screen, Wednesday night will feature prominently.