For three, it's another run for their lives
After surviving hardships in homeland, Somalis strive to overturn transfer ruling
By James B. Meadow, Rocky Mountain News
April 20, 2004
Lightly but powerfully, the young man glides along, an amalgam of gossamer and steel, graceful as a willow in a storm. Behind him - but not too far behind - lurks another; smooth but tenacious, short legs creating impossibly long strides that gobble up ground with a ferocious appetite. Finally, following in the soft footfalls, comes a third figure, laboring a bit more than the others, more mechanical than fluid, but dogged; more of a blue-collar athlete whose major flaw is not being one of the two runners ahead of him.
The three teenagers create a striking athletic ballet as they run, hearing, as one says, "nothing but the wind." Moving effortlessly through the silence and feeling peaceful because "life is chilled out and there aren't any stresses." Just running. Not thinking of the horror they grew up in half a world away. Not thinking of the bullets and the screams of tortured men; of murdered fathers and mothers attacked by snakes; of malaria and famine and infant siblings dying mysteriously in the night. Of 18 family members sharing two rooms, of seven relatives to a bed.
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Just running. Not thinking of coming to a strange country with a strange language and discovering they were better at something than just about anybody else. Not thinking of how running came so naturally and was so joyous. Not thinking of the championships they helped win. Not thinking of the college scholarships it might earn them. Not thinking of how life took a crooked turn and how they began to feel guilty and isolated, pressured and angry.
Not thinking about anything but running. Something which always seemed so easy until it became hard. Well, no, that's not true. It isn't the running that's hard. It's being able to.
Runners allege intimidation
Here are some facts: Mohamud Ige, Abdurahman Faki and Yusuf Ahmed are each 16 years old. Ahmed (who is known as Aden) will be 17 in June. They are all from Somalia, although they didn't know each other until their families had emigrated to Denver and their paths crossed. They are all Muslims.
Ige (pronounced Iggy) and Ahmed not only are arguably the best sophomore and junior cross-country runners in Colorado, they are considered to be among the elite in the United States.
At the National Scholastic Indoor Track and Field Championships last month in New York, Ahmed's time in the 5,000-meter run stamped him as the No. 1-rated junior runner in the country.
Meanwhile, Ige emerged as the top- ranked sophomore in the mile, 2 mile and 5,000 meters. Together, the pair helped Denver West High School win a state cross-country title in 2002 and 2003 - something no Denver Prep League school had done in the previous 34 years.
Here are some more facts: In January, Ige, Ahmed and Faki transferred to Denver South High School. According to the rules of the Colorado High School Activities Association, their midyear transfer meant they were ineligible to run for Denver South for the spring semester and for five meets in the following fall semester.
The boys requested a hardship waiver that would have allowed them to compete immediately for Denver South. The waiver was denied by CHSAA commissioner Bill Reader.
The boys secured a lawyer and, as was their statutory right, took their case to binding arbitration. They appealed CHSAA's ruling before the Judicial Arbiter Group, an organization of retired judges. Sometime this week, perhaps as early as today, former Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Luis Rovira is expected to rule whether they can run now or will have to wait.
Those are the facts. Here are the allegations.
In the thick complaint the boys' attorney presented to Rovira is the charge that Louis Cruz, the Denver West cross-country coach - and a full-time employee of the Young Life Christian Ministries - has "aggressively applied the Ministry's conversion-directed practices toward the boys, whether they welcomed it or not, which they did not."
The document also reads that "Mohamud, Aden, and Abdurahman (pronounced Ob-DRA-min) were subjected to repeated and unwanted pressure and religious intimidation from coach Cruz."
Or, as Ige's letter to Reader put it, "Every Monday Coach would hold Young Life meetings and ask us to attend. We would tell him no, but he persisted every week to ask us even though he knew we were Muslims. This made me feel uncomfortable."
Based in Colorado Springs but active in all 50 states and in about 50 foreign countries, Young Life is a Christian outreach organization whose mission is "introducing adolescents to Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their faith."
Young Life's Web site, YoungLife.org, says the way its leaders meet kids is simple.
"Our approach is relational. Leaders go wherever kids are to begin building significant relationships with them. Leaders go to sports practices, high school sporting events, concerts, plays, malls and fast-food restaurants."
As to how Young Life's staff is able to access public schools, the Web site literature explains, "There are two ways that Young Life leaders can find their way into a school. One way is that they are invited by the administration because principals and superintendents are aware of the positive impact Young Life can have on high school kids. The other way is that leaders approach the administration and ask for permission to be on the campus."
Burden of proof wasn't met
A central item in the complaint about Cruz is that almost all of his advocacy of Young Life "occurred on school grounds, during or shortly before or after team practices or team events."
Some people didn't want to talk about it, since Rovira hasn't rendered his verdict. The boys wouldn't comment beyond their complaints.
And when Cruz was contacted, his polite response was, "I've been advised not to say anything because the arbitration is not complete. The only thing I can tell you right now is 'no comment.' "
Cruz reportedly has denied all allegations in the complaint. Others, however, have been willing to talk.
CHSAA commissioner Reader said he denied the hardship waiver because there was no documentation.
"There was a letter from each young man saying they were having a hardship, but no letters from anyone else," he said. "The burden of proof is on them to justify the request for the waiver. Just writing a letter stating that this happened, unfortunately, I can't go with that. I needed a whole lot more information than they had given me."
The complaint says Reader denied the hardship request without "comment or explanation" just one day after he had been presented with the letters.
"How long does it take to read a two- page form and one letter from each young man?" Reader replied.
As for the charge he didn't speak to the boys, Reader said that's not unusual. And Reader wouldn't disclose what documentation was preferred.
"It's not up to me to determine that," he said. "It's up to them to determine what they need to justify their case."
A quick decision is "not odd at all," said Bob Ottewill, Reader's predecessor as CHSAA commissioner. "You walk in on any given day and there may be 10 of these (waiver requests) on your desk. You make those paper decisions a lot."
Reader said before he made his decision he consulted with the athletic directors of the Denver Prep League's member schools. The DPL denied the request.
"The thing was it (the charges) wasn't reported to the principal," said Leslie Moore, director of athletics for Denver Public Schools. "That's a concern - that nothing was brought up. It means the school wasn't given an opportunity to address those allegations at the school level."
According to Moore, after the boys filed their complaint, the district did an in- depth investigation and found the allegations were "not true."
Denver West principal Angela Bodenhamer said she would have addressed the concerns immediately had they been brought to her.
"The students never spoke to myself or any of the staff until that day they asked for the transfer to another school," she said. "We do not tolerate any mistreatment of students for any reason."
The boys' failure to let officials know in advance raised red flags for some. But they say they had a reason for their silence.
For Ige, it was simple.
"I wouldn't talk to no teacher, no assistant principal, because I knew they wouldn't do anything about it," he said.
"I didn't want to say nothing because I didn't want to hurt the other guys on the team - they liked Louis Cruz," said Ahmed, who said he confided in his mother about some of what was going on. "She wanted to complain, but I said 'Don't do it.' I didn't want her to mess things up. The team was going good."
Sadiya Kulane, Ahmed's mother, said she didn't believe her son's complaints at first.
"But I did believe it afterwards, after what that man (Cruz) said in front of me," she said.
She said after Denver West won its second state title, "That man came up to me and said, 'Somalian mafia has struck back again.' I did not like that word, 'mafia.' I take it this way - he belittled those boys."
Kulane also thinks she knows why her son and his friends weren't comfortable complaining.
"It has something to do with our culture, the kid always respects adults; we are raised this way," she said. "We always respect adults and teachers. The way we grow up we're not supposed to even talk back. Even if adult or teacher make that comment, we don't want to talk back."
Other supporters of the boys have suggested their reluctance to question authority stems from another place, a dark realm of fear. The kind of fear that whispers speaking up and asking questions can be dangerous. The kind of paralyzing fear that anoints your childhood when the world goes into convulsions.
Childhood in a desperate land
In 1991, the long dictatorship of Siad Barre collapsed and so did Somalia. Brutal fighting between competing clans and warlords erupted throughout the country, resulting in epic upheaval, death and displacement.
Over the next decade, the unending civil war, rampant diseases such as cholera, malaria and tuberculosis, and cyclical famine would cause half a million people to perish and another million to become refugees.
Walking along the streets of Brawa Yare, Abdurahman routinely found shell casings strewn on the ground. Sometimes, near the jail, he could hear the cries of the tortured. He grew used to men bursting into his family's house with guns to "just steal stuff. It was normal."
Meanwhile, in the capital of Mogadishu, it was not unusual for Aden to "see groups of Somali people dying. I could see them taking their last breath." Not infrequently, "people would come with wheelbarrows, picking up the bodies."
Sometimes, the dead were not strangers. Mohamud was in his home when he heard men barge into another room where his father was in bed. Then he heard the gunshot that killed his father.
For Aden, things were even grimmer. When Aden was 3, his father was killed in the violence. Two years later, he was in the market with his stepfather, holding his hand. Men came up from behind and shot his stepfather in the head. Aden didn't know why.
Like so many others, the boys' families left their homeland and headed west to different refugee camps in Kenya. Though they were far from the madness of Somalia, and though the boys could play soccer and use their slingshots to kill pigeons for "backup food," the camps weren't havens.
Abdurahman's father would describe the family's 6 ½ years in a camp outside the Kenyan city of Mombasa as "very hard, like hell." Abdurahman slept on the floor with six siblings, each fighting for the one pillow.
His older brother became ill with malaria three times. Then there was the horrifying moment walking in the woods with his mother when a spitting cobra sprayed its venom into her face. The venom ignites burning pain and inflammation of the eyes and, in some cases, can cause blindness.
Abdurahman's mother screamed for him to run to get help. Terrified, the 6-year-old sprinted for the camp. His mother's vision returned in a month.
Often, death would visit the camps. In the one where Aden lived in two rooms with 18 family members, it arrived deep into night and took his baby brother.
"He wasn't even 1 year," he said. "He died during midnight."
It might have been the mosquitoes and the diseases they brought. It might have been the pollution. Or the wet, heavy weather. It might have been anything.
"I'm not sure why he died," Aden said. "But he died."
After years in hell, all three families finally were blessed. A relief agency plucked them from the camps and sent them to other lands. Any country would have been paradise. In the cases of Mohamud, Aden and Abdurahman, heaven was the United States.
'Always a sad face'
Although each of the boys arrived in Colorado without knowing the others, that soon changed. And the reason was their common link to running. Although basketball was their first chosen sport, through the encouragement of a man named Brad Barnes, they began to see running might be the way to a better life, the kind of life that awaits someone who can run fast enough to earn a college scholarship.
Barnes was the coach of the West Side Track Club, and had heard about three gifted boys who were running for Baker and Rishel middle schools, in west Denver's Baker and Athmar Park neighborhoods, respectively.
Barnes became a volunteer assistant coach in 2000 at Denver West, the high school the three Somali youths were slated to attend. Shortly thereafter, the boys enrolled at West; first Aden, then Mohamud and Abdurahman.
At that time, Denver West was anything but a track power. But the addition of Ahmed and Ige helped change that. Becoming staples on the seven-runner cross- country team (Faki also was on the team but his slight, sub-100-pound frame meant he had some catching up to do), Aden and Mohamud began turning the heads of Colorado track aficionados.
In fall 2002, Denver West won the state championship in cross country - and Louis Cruz was named Rocky Mountain News coach of the year.
In fall 2003, Ige and Ahmed helped lead the school to its second title, finishing third and fourth at the state meet, although Ahmed was a junior and Ige a sophomore.
Even before that, their prowess was on display at the Great American Cross Country Festival in Cary, N.C. In September, against a national field of 161 runners, Ige came in first and Ahmed fifth. More important, West finished second in the team competition. Small wonder that by the end of 2003, the school's cross-country squad ranked fourth in the nation.
But as they were soaring over the trails of cross-country competitions, away from their sport, the Somalis were growing more troubled. As Ige put it, "I wasn't happy waking up in the morning; I always had a sad face thinking about West High School."
Young Life funded banquet
Part of their unhappiness lay in the isolation they felt in being a distinct racial minority at West. The school has a Hispanic population of 88 percent; blacks comprise 3 percent. The boys maintained they were subjected to racial slurs from other students. They said they didn't report them because when the few times they did, nothing happened.
As Ige wrote in his letter, "On several occasions fellow student (sic) called me a nigger in the classroom and when I talked to the teachers they would do nothing about it, because they did not hear the students say that."
Apprised of this, principal Bodenhamer reiterated she had heard nothing, and if she had, she would have taken immediate steps.
"West High School is rich in cultural diversity, and we embrace it," she said.
But beyond the alleged racial remarks was the religious fieldwork the boys said Cruz engaged in. And although Cruz would deny the allegations that he ever did any proselytizing on school grounds, at least one student remembers otherwise.
"Constantly at the end of practice, when we were all sitting around, he'd say, 'Are you coming to Young Life tonight? It's fun. If you need a ride, I'll pick you up,' " said Amanda Candelaria, a West senior who was on the girls cross-country team. "That happened pretty much every Monday."
Candelaria said Cruz approached her to attend Young Life meetings on Monday evenings when she first joined the team.
"After a while, he'd only ask me sporadically," she said.
She also recalls Cruz's lobbying for Young Life frequently occurred "in the hallways at lunch. I saw him talking to kids constantly."
There was another occasion when Cruz brought Young Life into Denver West's hallways. A year ago, during a junior class meeting in the school auditorium, Cruz performed a humorous skit, dressing up in a Boy Scout-like uniform and explaining how much fun it would be to attend Young Life's summer camp.
"He was trying to get kids interested so they'd listen," says Candelaria, who was present.
Asked if Cruz had said the camp had a Christian bent, she said, "No, he never mentioned that it was."
When Bodenhamer was asked if she knew about the program occurring in her school, she cited her impending testimony before Rovira and said, "I'd really rather not comment on that one."
Also contained in the complaint is the information the Denver West cross-country team's postseason banquet in 2003 was underwritten by Young Life.
The report also says: "Strangely, no parents were invited."
It also claims Denny Rydberg - the president of Young Life - was present and spoke to the team about his organization.
Although Rydberg was unavailable for comment, Young Life vice president Terry Swenson confirmed his group paid for the dinner - as well as the team banquet in 2002. However, he explained "It wasn't a Young Life event; it was an event put on by one of the team's fans."
The "fan" was Rydberg, who, Swenson said, is a "big sports fan" who has "followed Louis Cruz's coaching career and wanted to celebrate with coach Cruz and the team."
Swenson also said that as far as he knew, Rydberg didn't talk about Young Life, but merely "congratulated the boys."
Recently, when asked about the propriety of a religious organization funding a school athletic team function, Bodenhamer said, "My understanding was that the dinner was a club team event."
She said Denver West team members also belong to a running club separate from the school's cross- country and track teams. Asked why that dinner apparently was the only such affair for the school's championship team, she said, "I'd have to look into the details of that before I could answer."
Banquets aside, the boys also felt their religion was being disrespected by a statement they alleged Cruz had made that as Muslims they were going to go to hell.
Although none of the boys heard Cruz say it directly, Peter Nelson did. Nelson has a son who is a promising middle school runner. The boy is also a friend of Ige, Ahmed and Faki. In fact, the latter two live at Nelson's house part time to concentrate on improving their grades.
Nelson was standing next to Cruz at the Great American Cross Country Festival when the subject of religion came up.
"He made the comment to me, 'Without Jesus Christ, those boys cannot be saved. They'll go to hell,' " Nelson said. "I was sort of stunned."
So were Ige, Ahmed and Faki when they heard of it. As Ahmed wrote in his letter, "Everyone believes in different religions. But instead of focusing on what we should be achieving, he's (Cruz) busy judging my beliefs."
Runners' potential unlimited
In late December, the boys decided to transfer to Denver South. Since their motivation likely wasn't the desire to join a powerful team (they were leaving the state champion and enrolling at a school that finished 21st out of 22 schools at the 2003 state championships - and that was its first appearance at state in 13 years), some have wondered why South.
There has been a suggestion that it was Barnes - who left his volunteer position at West in December over what he calls "differences in personalities with administrators and other coaches" who exercised some sort of sway over them and directed them to Denver South.
Although Barnes still coaches the track club that Ige, Ahmed and Faki run for, he and the boys deny there was any grand conspiracies.
So does Denver South cross-country and track coach Tony Williams, who says, "I only found out they were coming to South two or three days before they showed up at school."
The primary motivation was, Faki says, "There are Muslims at South," citing his belief "there are five Muslims at West - me, Mo, Aden and my two sisters."
Ahmed's older sister previously had attended Denver South and Ige has a cousin there. They also indicated they thought they would feel more comfortable at a school where blacks comprise 18 percent of the student body.
Also, Ahmed says, "The academics is more challenging."
That is no small concern for three runners who have designs on college. That is why they feel this urgency to compete now. Not just because they feel they were wronged at West, but because they want to show college coaches - and maybe some high school coaches - what they can do now.
But whether they wear the purple and white of Denver South now or in six months, Williams has little doubts about what to expect.
"Look at Aden - his potential is unlimited," he said. "He's going to be the best senior in Colorado next year, and as far as what he can do in college, the sky's the limit."
Williams paused and added, "As far as Mohamud goes, I think he's going to be better than Aden. Mohamud has possible Olympic potential."
As for Faki, Barnes said his biggest problem at South is his friends.
"Aden and Mohamud cast a pretty large shadow that any other runner would have a hard time coming out from behind," Barnes said. "At any other school, Abdurahman would probably be one of the top two runners. But here . . ."
His voice trailed off. He looked at the boys run, his eyes following them as they knife through the air, lithe bodies relaxed as they devour distance and time in a curious inverse proportion.
But painted on their faces is an intensity, a look that is distant and inward, almost as if the future and the past always are joined to the present. They have come a million miles from the horror of their homeland, but the look on their faces seems to say they still have more miles to go. More miles down a twisting path, with only each other and the sound of the wind to keep them company.
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