Citizen Akoy

by Steve Marantz

  Imagination boggles at what must have transpired privately between Behrens and Akoy. Within a couple of days Akoy oozed contrition: “dear everybody, i sincerly apologize for my imature actions and language i have used on here. I also want to say sorry for all the kids that may see me as a role model to see me behave and use such inapropriate language. To my teammates, coaches, friends, and centarl high school i have let you down and hopefully somehow i can make it up to you.”

  After that he dropped a bombshell: “i will try my best to improve and make myself a better person and leader. I hope you will still see me as the same person you once saw me as. As far as basketball i will no longer be playing as of right now. Thank you and i hope you can find room in your heart to forgive.” To the Facebook world it appeared as if Akoy had retired. And then, just before Thanksgiving: “Im going back!!!”

  Whatever the issue, Akoy was back in the fold, ever more seduced by, and perhaps respectful of, social media. Notably absent from his posts was “gangsta” street dialect. Years later, Akoy recalled the episode: “One thing Behrens never allowed was disrespectful behavior. If I was out of line, he was quick to settle me down. At the time I thought he was crazy, but it was good for me; it kept me grounded.”

  After he had dealt with Akoy, Behrens assessed his talent with a gimlet eye: he had no Deverell Biggs who could average 21.1 points or pop for 35 in a state championship game. No, this team would have to defend the title with a different approach. This was a blue-collar team. Seniors Paulino Gomez (linebacker) and Ed Vinson (defensive end) were also co-captains of varsity football. Dom McKinzie and Calvin McCoy, the other two seniors, also played varsity football. Tra-Deon Hollins, Darian Barrientos-Jackson, Cameron Payne, Mike Welch, Deandre Hollins-Johnson, Deshun Roberts—all were football players. And now Akoy. “We had some really tough kids,” Behrens said.

  Gomez and Vinson, both of whom had come off the bench the prior season, were especially kick-ass. Akoy respected both because in practice he banged against their muscular frames. Gomez in particular was a kindred spirit. His parents had come from Mexico separately, in the early 1980s, and had arrived in California without documents. “My mom was very pale skinned, with reddish-brown hair,” Gomez said. “In those days you could go through and say you were an American citizen, and if you looked Caucasian, they let you through. My dad came inside a suitcase, in a car.”

  Gomez’s mother, Victoria Edwards, first married an American, which allowed her to be naturalized. His father, Paulino Sr., had become a citizen through an amnesty program. After Victoria’s marriage broke apart, they met in Pasadena and became a couple. In the early 1990s Victoria and Paulino Sr. settled in Omaha, where she worked as a waitress and he worked in construction. Gomez was born in 1993, the last of his mother’s five children. He grew up at Thirty-Second and Pacific, at the edge of South Omaha, in a neighborhood with a strong Latino presence. Many of the Latino kids he knew in elementary and middle school went to South High, which had the most Latino students in the city. But Gomez chose Central, he recalled, “because I was a kid who wanted to go my own path.”

  Gomez played soccer, football, and basketball at Central and was appreciated by coaches and teammates for his grit, savvy, and work ethic, if not raw talent. Gomez thought of his coaches and teammates as family, all the more so when his mother was diagnosed with brain cancer in January 2010, during his junior season of basketball. In March, a few days after Central won the title and Gomez had a gold medal hung around his neck, Victoria Edwards died at age fifty. “I wanted to make her proud; being on the basketball team definitely did,” Gomez recalled.

  Both the basketball and football coaching staffs attended the funeral. Behrens’s wife, Trish, sent dinner to the Gomez home. An assistant coach, Ben Holling, gathered donations for a Wal-Mart gift card. When Holling came by to deliver the card, he asked Gomez how he felt. “I said fine; I’m tough; I can take it,” Gomez recalled. “He said it was okay if I wanted to cry. So I did. That moment sticks with me.”

  Gomez’s teammates buoyed him, none more than Vinson. It had been a year since Vinson’s mother, Sherry Zollicoffer, had died from stomach cancer. Vinson had watched helplessly as her illness progressed; she was the sole parent in the lives of him and his three siblings. “It was a crazy time in my life,” Vinson recalled. “What I remember is how Behrens and everybody on the staff supported me. Behrens let me stay at his house a couple times to get away from the stuff at home; he really looked out for me. That was huge to me at that time, one of the reasons I stayed in school.” When Gomez’s mother died, Vinson was there for him. “I reached out to him as a friend and a brother,” Vinson recalled. “I was somebody he could talk to when he needed to talk. When I went through it, I didn’t know a lot. When he went through it, I tried to help him make something positive of it. I gave him encouragement, and he did the rest.”

  Gomez did not show up much in the box scores and accounts of the 2010–11 season, but his presence was felt in the results. Absent a big scorer, Behrens built the team for defense and featured a full-court press and half-court zone trap. At guard were sophomore cousins, Hollins and Hollins-Johnson, who put relentless pressure on the ball after they became starters midway through the season. Defending behind them was a foursome who shared time—Barrientos-Jackson, McKinzie, Welch, and Vinson—all football players and bruisers. The last line of defense was Akoy, who had 52 blocks in 26 games prior to the state tournament. Even as Akoy protected the rim, his numbers improved from just less than 6 points and 6 rebounds as a freshman to 10.6 points and 6.4 rebounds.

  Gomez, at 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds, got about six minutes a game, usually to spell Vinson or McKinzie at power forward. When he wasn’t in the game, he made sure his teammates were. “I knew all the plays the other teams would run; I liked the Xs and Os in basketball,” Gomez recalled. “I would yell at my teammates, like I was another coach on the bench. In practice I was good at being the scout team. We played teams that ran the ‘flex’ offense, and I was able to do that.”

  In practice Gomez often drew Akoy as his assignment. “I would always try to put a body on him to make him tougher,” Gomez said. “I boxed him out and made him work.” As the season progressed and Akoy’s game matured, Gomez took personal satisfaction. He had known Akoy as a gawky middle school hopeful and had watched him grow and gain confidence. They shared basketball and the immigrant struggle. “We related,” Gomez recalled. “My parents weren’t refugees, but if you think about it, they left Mexico for a better life, not only for themselves but for their kids. Same with Akoy’s family.”

  To reach state, Central beat Lincoln East 95–44 in the district semifinal and Grand Island 74–43 in the district finals. At that point the Eagles were 23–3 and had given up fewer than 40 points in five games and fewer than 50 points in 16 games, compared with having done so in 17 games in the previous five seasons combined. Only one of the championship teams from 2006–8 had held more than one opponent under 50: the 2007–8 team had done it four times.

  The Eagles held their first-round opponent at state, Lincoln North Star, to 6 points in the first quarter and 4 points in the third quarter and won, 69–34. In a 70–59 semifinal victory over Norfolk Akoy had 11 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 blocks.

  In the final the team drew Omaha Bryan, the school from which Akoy had withdrawn his freshman commitment and whose front line featured 6-foot-4 Reath Jiech, another South Sudanese refugee. Bryan ran a “flex” offense with a lot of back screens and motion. Gomez knew the “flex” schematic and helped his teammates prepare against it, though he was unlikely to see action.

  Before the game Behrens exhorted his team in a locker room talk captured on video by assistant coach Jay Landstrom: “We’re still hungry, okay? We’ve got to come out here in the first three minutes, and we’ve got to punch people in the mouth. Central’s been good because we don’t play not to lose; we play to win, okay? When we see an opportunity to attack, we attack . . . and we’re not on our heels pla
ying scared, hoping they make a mistake, okay? We make plays.” At that, players huddled around Behrens with their fists in the air, touching. “All year, you guys have put ‘we’ before ‘me,’” Behrens continued. “You’ve just wanted to win for Central. One more time I’m asking you to take that mentality out there.” Together they chanted, “One, Two, Three, Family!”

  Central scored the first nine points and led 26–16 at halftime. Bryan came to within a point, 46–45, with 3:43 left, and then came up empty on its next four single-shot possessions, which featured a crucial block by Akoy. Central made 6 free throws, with 2 from Akoy, and the final 2 from Hollins with 17 seconds left. Final score: Central, 52–48. Bryan was held to 27 percent shooting (12 of 45) in the eighteenth game in which Central held an opponent under 50.

  Central won its fifteenth straight at state, dating back to 2006, and its fifth championship in six years. Akoy finished with 11 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 blocks, and he told a reporter, “I think we can come back and do this the next two years.” In the postgame locker room, again captured on video by Landstrom, Behrens praised his players: “I’m proud of this group because you found a different way to do it. . . . We held our last opponent under 50 points again. So you did it on defense. And it wasn’t that pretty.”

  Then Behrens named his four seniors—McKinzie, McCoy, Vinson, and Gomez—and tapped his heart. “You guys know how I feel about you,” he said. “I couldn’t be prouder of you guys. I’m going to miss you, but I could not be happier that you got another championship in your last game. This one was for you guys—this was for the four seniors.” Behrens raised his fist for the “family” chant. His players encircled, raised cups of water, and drenched him. Hilarity ensued, with Akoy, Gomez, and Vinson in the middle of it.

  The highlight video runs just over twenty-seven minutes. At 23:21 it goes tight on Gomez, with a huge grin on his face: “We did it baby. We did it.” At 24:20 Gomez, Vinson, and a few others bust a move to T.I.’s “On Top of the World.” At 26:23 the camera finds Gomez and Vinson in front of a locker as they display their gold medals and linger for the last time in their purple-and-white.

  “See this,” says Gomez.

  “That’s hard work,” says Vinson.

  “Hard work,” Gomez says. “Fifteen games in a row we’ve won here. That’s cold.”

  9

  “True Faith and Allegiance”

  That spring Akoy fell in love with somebody other than himself. He shared a math class with a freshman girl, Lauren Wegner, whom he friended on Facebook. Wegner played on a select softball team with Charlotte Sjulin, a sophomore at small, private Concordia High in west Omaha. Through Wegner, Akoy and Sjulin, known as “Lotte,” became Facebook friends. Then they became real-life friends. Then it got interesting.

  “First time we met was at a movie,” Lotte recalled. “Me and my two girlfriends and he and his best guy friend. I wouldn’t call it a date. Just hanging out.” An elite athlete in her own right, Lotte knew of Akoy’s basketball celebrity. She decided to preempt his ego. “You can’t sit by me,” she told him. Miffed or pretending to be, Akoy sat three rows in front of the group. “So I knew it was going to be pretty light and relaxed,” Lotte recalled. “And then he came back and sat with us.”

  To the naked eye they seemed an unlikely pair, she a luminous brunette beauty, the daughter of two physicians Midwestern-born and bred. She lived on 180th Street in an affluent west Omaha zip code almost as different from the Near North Side as from South Sudan. Race and class were vast chasms they stared across. Less obvious was their shared faith. The mission of Lotte’s high school, part of Lutheran Schools of Omaha, was “to prepare young people for lives of faith, service and leadership as Christian disciples.” Akoy believed in Jesus too, as a Catholic, and spoke openly of his faith. They jousted over the relative merits of the Catholic and Lutheran theologies. It was both good-natured and serious, and it carved out a basis for their mutual respect. Then too, as noted, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service was one of nine resettlement agencies for the U.S. government. Refugees were in the heart and soul of Lutherans.

  Lotte was smitten. “The minute she met Akoy, she said, ‘You have to meet this guy—he’s super cool,’” recalled Ann Sjulin, Lotte’s mother.

  Lotte’s father, Dave, was dubious. “I had seen him interviewed on TV, and he was kind of a character,” Dave recalled. “Lotte said, ‘I know Akoy; I talk to him all the time.’ I said, ‘How’s that?’ She said she was his friend on Facebook. And I said, ‘You and a thousand others are his friend on Facebook. Everybody wants to be friends with Akoy on Facebook.’ So I didn’t think it was real at all.”

  Akoy’s introduction to the Sjulins was delayed almost permanently. In April 2011 he was with three friends from Central—on their way to an afternoon track meet—when their car ran a stop sign about two blocks from Akoy’s home. The front passenger side, where Akoy rode, took a direct hit. “We flew and hit somebody’s garage,” Akoy recalled. “My whole door was destroyed. I don’t remember how, but somehow I managed to climb out on the driver’s side.” Police found Akoy on a lawn, bleeding from a head laceration. He assured them he was not in pain and could walk on his own, but when he tried, he fell in a heap. An ambulance took him to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a concussion but no broken bones. One of Akoy’s friends suffered a broken wrist and another a broken collar bone.

  This was not Akoy’s first crash. The previous November he, Adaw, and her brother Martin were hit on their way to Wal-Mart for Black Friday. Nobody was hospitalized, but Akoy had neck and back pain for several days. After the more recent crash Akoy was hospitalized for almost a week. South Sudanese friends visited and laid crosses around his bed. One hospital worker gave him a blanket that pictured dollar bills above a message: “Get Up and Make That Money.” Among the cards and flowers that came to him was a bouquet from Lotte and her older sister Lucy. On Easter Sunday, as the Sjulins drove back from a weekend with Ann’s parents in western Nebraska, Lotte called Akoy. They chatted and then Lotte handed her phone to her father.

  “Hello, this is Dave.”

  “Hello, Dr. Sjulin. I’m going to marry your daughter.”

  “What!”

  Dave Sjulin managed to keep the car on the road as he relayed Akoy’s “hello” to his wife, Lotte, and her two sisters. All were incredulous. “We’re like, ‘Who is this?’” recalled Ann. “And ‘You’re crazy.’”

  The phone conversation continued for the better part of two hours as the Sjulins crossed the state. The snippet that lodged in Dave’s memory was Akoy’s question, “What do you like to bake?” Dave allowed that he made a “mean banana bread.” Akoy asked Dave to bring him one in the hospital.

  “So we got back from Easter and Lotte said, ‘I’m going to take Akoy and his family some banana bread,’” Ann recalled. “Lotte never had an interest in cooking, but she and Dave made some banana bread.” Lotte delivered banana bread to Akoy at the hospital.

  Akoy asked to be released from the hospital a day early because he had an appointment to keep. His head was bandaged when Adaw and Madut picked him up and drove with him and his younger siblings (Maguy, Aguir, and Achol) to the immigration center near the airport. He and his siblings became American citizens that day in April 2011. Their test was waived under a provision for children under eighteen if a parent had passed the test. Absent a test, they could relax. On a video President Obama congratulated them and welcomed them to the responsibilities of citizenship. Alongside other immigrants and refugees, the Agau kids raised their hands and took the Naturalization Oath:

  I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I w
ill bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

  One by one their names were called, and they were handed their certificates of citizenship. One of Akoy’s friends from grassroots basketball, Mike Sautter, snapped a photo of the four siblings. Adaw watched with tearful eyes and hugged each of her children. Then they went home to a party with family and friends. Adaw’s sister cooked a couple of traditional South Sudanese meat-and-vegetable dishes. Fried chicken, a favorite of Akoy’s, was served. That afternoon Adaw savored the happiness on the face of her oldest son. A day ago he had been in a hospital bed. Now he was eating fried chicken as an American citizen. He noticed her gaze and was grateful. “Thank you mom for bringing us here,” he told her. “And thank you for helping us to do it easy.”

  The next day Akoy asked Lotte to bring, as she recalled, “Fourteen dollars’ worth of McDonald’s. An Angus burger with large fries, large drink, two McDevils, two cinnamon twists.” But she got lost looking for his home because she had never been to that part of town. “She called me and said, ‘I don’t know where this is,’” recalled Ann. “And I didn’t know because at that time I hadn’t been down there either.”