Creative player trades dirt for turf

New Timber learned skills on the streets of Kenya without a coach

By steve brandon

The Portland Tribune, Apr 10, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

DENISE FARWELL / P0RTLAND TRIBUNE

Midfielder Lawrence Olum was plucked from the parking-lot games of Nairobi by a recruiter from Missouri Baptist University.

The love of the game led Lawrence Olum to America, and to the Portland Timbers.

Growing up in Nairobi, Kenya, he and his friends played soccer for fun. They had no team, and no coaches.

“We could make a ball out of anything, paper or whatever,” he says. “We’d find a small space or an empty parking lot and just play.”

Nairobi is a city of about 3 million, but through high school Olum never played organized soccer. “It was always just friends coming over and getting a game together,” he says.

After high school, though, he was chosen to play select soccer for the mayor of the city.

One day, a man approached him and asked him about his education. Olum told him he had graduated from high school. How about your grades, the man asked. “We don’t have GPAs, but I told him I had a 3.5 equivalent,” Olum says.

How would you like a college education, asked the man from Missouri Baptist University in St. Louis. He then called Olum’s mother. “All she heard was ‘free education,’ and it was for her,” Olum says, laughing.

Three weeks later, Olum was on a plane, headed for the United States.

“I had mixed feelings,” he says, “but you want to challenge yourself and get new experiences, and see the world you only see on TV.”

Welcome to Jordan country

He initially had no idea where St. Louis or Missouri were. “But I had a clue about Chicago from watching Michael Jordan and the Bulls,” he says. “The NBA is big in Kenya. Everybody loves Michael.”

Olum, a 6-2 midfielder, played four years of soccer at Missouri Baptist, three times earning NAIA honorable mention All-America honors. Last year, he scored a team-high nine goals in 16 matches for the St. Louis Lions of the United Soccer League’s Premier Development League.

Now he is two levels higher in the USL, having signed with the First Division Portland Timbers.

“I’m trying not to make it a big challenge, but it is,” says Olum, 22. “Coming from nowhere to actually playing somewhere with your name on the back of a jersey is a big challenge.”

Portland coach and General Manager Gavin Wilkinson wanted him on the team.

“As far as being a gifted athlete, a dominant presence, the football awareness, the intelligence, he’s got tremendous potential,” Wilkinson says. “This is obviously a whole other level for him, but he’s capable of getting forward and he’s good in the air. I see him as possibly playing in the middle of the park for us.”

No coach told him what to do

The creativity that came from playing unsupervised soccer as a youngster is one of Olum’s strengths.

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