When Stony Brook’s Serigne Sylla steps out onto Rhodes Field Friday afternoon against Penn, he will be nearly 4,000 miles from home. That will not stop him from playing the game he loves.
“In Senegal, you are born to play soccer and everything comes naturally,” Sylla said.
Sylla and teammate Mame Samb were born and raised in the West African city of Dakar, Senegal. There, they honed their skills playing pickup games day in and day out.
“Over there we take soccer so, so seriously,” Samb said. “I used to play every day from morning to afternoon. The soccer is tough because there are very good players over there.”
For the pair, that meant walking home from school every day and playing barefoot on makeshift fields, on the street and in empty sandlots.
Sylla was the first to arrive in the United States in 2004. He came to receive a better education and job to help his family back home. After he transferred to Martin Luther King Jr. High School in New York midway through his freshman year, he found out about the school’s soccer team and tried out.
The team, which was ranked fifth in the nation at one point, was a miniature United Nations. Sylla easily fit in with the other West African players from Ivory Coast, Mali and Guinea, as well as the Latin Americans.
Samb made the move to the U.S. in late 2005, and shortly after he met Sylla for the first time. Introduced by Mame’s elder brother, Sylla and Samb talked about life in the U.S. and playing high-school soccer. The two quickly became best friends, which helped them overcome some of the difficulties of moving away from their families.
Sylla’s father lived with him for a few years but eventually moved back to Senegal.
“In some ways I miss him — he used to give me a lot of advice when I was living here with him,” Sylla said. “Now that he’s back there, we keep in touch but it’s not the same.”
“I would rather have him on the side and my mom too. I haven’t seen her since I came here in seven years.”
The pair continued their journey together after high school where both played at SUNY-Cobleskill, but the transition was just as difficult.
“As a freshman, I didn’t know a lot of things,” Samb said. “You don’t have anybody to tell you what to do. I didn’t have anyone to support me.”
After only a year, the pair moved on to Stony Brook, where they received full scholarships.
Under rookie coach Ryan Anatol, the technically gifted six-foot-four Samb has moved from his customary position of center-midfielder to centerback to encourage more possession. Slotted right in front of Samb is none other than the visionary Sylla.
Both seniors, Sylla is considering the possibility of playing professionally and would otherwise look to work at a bank in New York. Samb says he may return to Senegal if he cannot find a job here.
No matter what the future may hold, the memories of home will continue to guide them.
“We talk a lot about playing in Senegal and how fun it was,” Sylla said. “Sometimes [Mame] tells me he wants to go back and do things again because it was so much fun.”
