Rising senior distance runner Kofi Fordjour laced up his first pair of spikes in eleventh grade because his high school required that he play a sport. Now, he’s the leading man on the Quakers’ cross country squad.
Last season, Fordjour set personal records in both the 8-kilometer and the 10-kilometer races. He barely missed All-Ivy recognition at the Ivy League Heptagonal Cross Country Championships, finishing 20th as the Quakers’ top scorer.
This was just a year removed from a sophomore season that saw him finish just two races and fail to qualify for Heps. What looks on paper to be a breakout season wasn’t a surprise to Fordjour — it’s hardly the most unexpected series of events in his athletic career.
Just four years before his breakout collegiate campaign, racing was the last thing on his mind.
Fordjour had flashes of success as a runner before his freshman year of high school. In seventh grade, he ran the fastest time at his school as part of the presidential fitness test, and in eighth grade he won his city’s cross country championships without any training. Running wasn’t something he had ever taken all too seriously. Nevertheless, Fordjour thought it best to give it a shot when his high school required that he play a sport.
He described the first practice as nothing short of miserable.
“We did a [workout], and it’s called the whistle workout. So they blow the whistle, and you would run for a minute, or however long they wanted you to run for it,” Fordjour said. “You had no idea. And then they would blow the whistle, and you stop, and then they blow the whistle again, and you go. And I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this sucks!’”
Fordjour got through a total of three days of cross country practice before quitting — not the typical storybook beginning for one of the top cross country runners in the conference. It wasn’t for another two years that the Quincy, Mass. native would step on a starting line.
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After two years of focusing on football and basketball as his main sports, a high school physics teacher influenced Fordjour to give cross country another chance. And this time, things went differently.
“So that summer, I trained it a little bit, then came in the fall, and I freaking loved it!” Fordjour said.
His first season of cross country was nothing short of a success. Fordjour finished third in the New England championships and tenth in his league meet. But more importantly, he was having fun and making connections with his teammates, igniting his love for the sport. It wasn’t the year of personal records and wins, but rather the year Fordjour first became a runner.
After his fall season, Fordjour was fully invested. That winter, he quit basketball and chose to run both indoor and outdoor track, making running his main focus.
“It was just kind of like I knew I had the talent. I just had to train for it,” Fordjour said.
College recruiters weren’t looking for an eleventh grader with little experience. But Fordjour did what he always did: the unexpected.
That track season, he opened his mile with a 4:38-minute finish — a blistering time for a high school debut. But this was only the beginning. Fordjour managed to peak at the end-of-season championship meet, stopping the clock at 4:15.77 on his future home track, Franklin Field. In a single season, Fordjour cut an unprecedented 22 seconds off his mile time.
"I don’t know how to describe it. It was just kind of like I trained a little bit and I got really good. And then basically got recruited to Penn off of that run,” Fordjour said of his championship race. “Coach Dolan saw that race, and he hit me up after the race and [I] got recruited.”
Fordjour went from not racing his sophomore year of high school to getting recruited to a Division 1 program his junior year.
After a solid collegiate freshman cross country season in 2023, Fordjour was gearing up for an even stronger sophomore year as the unexpected occurred. In 2024, the distance runner suffered Achilles tendonitis the entire season, limiting him to just two completed races.
Fordjour tried his best to persevere through the pain. He would intentionally leave his spikes loose so his Achilles wasn’t irritated. The season is best summarized by his performance at the Princeton Fall Classic, where he lost a shoe in the first 400 meters. Fordjour put his shoe back on as the rest of the field ran past, leaving him behind. That fall, he was stuck watching everyone progress while he was limited by an injury out of his control.
Kofi Fordjour during a fall 2024 race. (Courtesy of Penn Athletics)
“I remember just taking some self-reflection after the season because I was really hard on myself in that time period, and I was just kind of like, I just want to enjoy it,” Fordjour said of his sophomore cross country season. "It’s fun. Like the whole reason I did this thing is because I really enjoy it and like doing it, and I think I just had to tell myself that. And there’s a lot of things you can’t control in the sport, but you can control your attitude. You can control how you show up.”
As Fordjour was in a place of stagnation, he reminded himself of the reason he became a runner back in 2021: running was fun.
Next season brought its own set of challenges for the men’s cross country squad. It lost both of its NCAA Cross Country Championships qualifiers in Luke Johnson and All-American Dylan Throop to graduate transfers to Georgetown and Notre Dame, respectively. There was a hole left to fill on the men’s cross country squad, and Fordjour was up for the challenge.
Fordjour put his foot on the gas immediately. He opened his junior season with a 22nd-place finish at the Jersey Jam, clocking a new personal best over 5.8 kilometers. He lowered his personal record in the 8K at the Princeton Fall Classic, the final regular season meet of the season.
At Heps, he finished 20th in the conference, becoming the Quakers’ top scorer. At the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regionals just over two weeks later, Fordjour would finish his first collegiate 10K in an impressive 30:51.3 while once again being the Quakers’ top scorer.
“No one really expected me to take the step of going from having not even been at the Ivy League meet to being our top scorer or being top 20 in the league,” Fordjour said. “It just came from a willingness to step up for the team.”
Fordjour did it for his teammates — the very reason why his first ever cross country season had been so magical. He didn’t enjoy it for the individual successes, instead appreciating what it means to be a part of something bigger than himself.
“Cross [country] can break your spirit, man,” Fordjour said. “But at the same time, if you have a good cross race and you know your team’s doing well, it’s a good time.”
From an outsider’s perspective, this breakout was unexpected. The jump from not making Heps to being the team’s top scorer certainly isn’t the typical path of a top 20 runner in the Ivy League. But even after an unfortunate 2024 season, Fordjour trusted the process.
“I mean it’s kind of like the cliche of an overnight success, right? An overnight success, but it’s a thousand miles being run. Thousands of miles were being run,” Fordjour said. “If you talk to anyone, anyone would say like, oh, they didn’t expect it, but they would be like, yeah, he probably expected it. I think I just always have had a chip on my shoulder, and I’ve always thought I could do better than I've done.”
Just as he did in high school when he became a D-I recruit off of one year of running, Fordjour used the unexpected to his advantage. Last year, he used the lack of attention on him as fuel to break through. Now, he can’t be counted out.
Although Fordjour improved by leaps and bounds individually last season, Penn men’s cross country suffered a disappointing end to the 2025 season. The squad ultimately finished seventh at Heps, with Fordjour the only Quaker to finish within the top 30.
That day, as the Quakers watched Princeton win the 2025 Heps title, Fordjour recalls turning to his teammates and telling them to remember that feeling to ignite the team’s fire going into the next season. He encouraged his teammates to use the moments of disappointment as fuel to rise.
The 2026 Penn cross country team will feature a lot of returners, among them six of the seven Quakers who ran at Heps in 2025. Even after the disappointing seventh-place finish last season, there isn’t a doubt in Fordjour’s mind that his team can finish as a top squad this season and “put some frowns on Princeton’s faces.”
This year, the rising senior is planning to do what he does best: surprise people. Just like he did when he went from not running for two years to becoming a D-I recruit. And just like he did when he went from running just two races his sophomore season to being the Quakers’ top scorer at Heps.
