Emmanuel Atorkui '23 Recruiting Profile

When I was three, my grandfather came home with a football. “Touchdown!” I’d yell, with every pass I caught. I used to wake up my father and beg him to take me to the park to play. I was obsessed. But my mother was not a fan of American football and she shut down any chance I had of playing it as a competitive sport. Instead, my father bought me my first pair of cleats when I was six, and signed me up for tryouts with a  recreational soccer team in our neighborhood. I was fast and strong. Scoring every game, I was a crucial part of my team winning our league. 

I played club soccer at nine, with kids my age, but the level wasn’t as competitive as I’d hoped. That changed when I joined Union Soccer Club U9 and U10s, and what an adjustment for someone who was used to having wins come easily. The players were as good, if not better than me. I learned that it took teamwork and sportsmanship to advance to the next level. I learned that I had to continually work for my spot on the team, for my stats, and for the relationships I wanted to have with my teammates and my coach. 

 At fourteen, I asked my father to believe in me and help me achieve my dream of making something of myself in the world of professional soccer. But having been raised as an African child, being an athlete was a hobby not a profession. He preferred if I became an engineer or a lawyer. I learned then that my father played soccer in Ghana and dreamed of playing professionally. He told me there were no resources and no way to break through successfully as a player, so he gave up on his passion early on. This made me more determined to achieve this dream not only for myself, but for my dad, too. 

Throughout high school, I’ve played with some of the best teams and players in my area. The more I played, the more disciplined I became. I had a singular focus and started to change my lifestyle to prove to my father that I was committed. In December 2021, I was invited to a camp in Miami to train with professional coaches and play in front of scouts. I was sixteen, not an ideal age for many coaches, and I didn’t have much faith that I was going to start nor even play in the match. But the coach announced my name in the line up, saying, “I think you can do the job for us up top at striker.” I got to prove that age was just a number. I started out the game poorly and ended with an invitation from  a coach from the Watford Academy Football Club to try out for the team in England. This pushed me to do bigger things, including to win a National Championship with the Cedars Stars Academy. 

Since I started playing soccer, I have been seeking my parents’ approval, but it has never worked. My dad does not think I have what it takes to be the one out of one hundred players who makes it. I know he is scared for me. Instead, he is encouraging me to pursue sport journalism or sports management. I have explained to my father that I, too, want a career in the sports industry one day, as an ESPN journalist or a coach or an agent. But first I want to seek my dream of becoming a professional player. I want my parents to be proud of me, but I’ve accepted that doing what I love may never gain their approval. I feel confident in my life choices and the decisions I made to get here. I have learned that passion combined with determination and hard work is a winning combination.