He's taking it all in stride

By Charles Sowell  

NOVEMBER 2, 2010 8:46 a.m. (0)

Gilbert Kemboi grew up in the Rift Valley of Kenya racing the sunset home from elementary school.

It was a long way from his school to the safety of home and he’s a long way from there today.

He grew up outside of Eldoret, Kenya. His small community was a place of subsistence farms and large families; of few paved roads and many footpaths.

The 24-year-old University of South Carolina Upstate sophomore recently made Sports Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd for his prowess in cross county running.

Not surprising perhaps for someone from a nation noted for distance runners.

Nonetheless, the story of how Kemboi came to Spartanburg certainly differs from the norm.

He’s older than most of the runners he competes against on the collegiate level, but far less experienced. Kemboi didn’t start training as a runner until after he graduated from high school.

“He’s quick,” said Carson Blackwelder, cross country coach for the Spartans. And the team has high hopes for their cross country star. “He ran his last (8K) race at a 440 (yard) pace.”

This year Kemboi set school and course records at the 8K Eye Opener Invitational (a five-mile course) for the second straight year.

His time on the course at the Roger Milliken Center of 24 minutes, 13 seconds shaved 47 seconds off his time from last year.

Two weeks later, he lowered the school record in winning the Clemson Invitational (23:59). Kemboi was the 2009 Atlantic Sun Conference Freshman of the Year.

He is a shy young man with a dazzling smile and a firm handshake, part of his culture back home in Africa where student socializing starts with a handshake and is done face to face instead of online.

“My first year here it took some getting used to. The students didn’t talk much to me, or to each other,” Kemboi said. “In the dorms back home (he went to a boarding high school) everyone talked all the time. Here, not so much so.”

Culture shock ran rampant from the time he boarded a jet at Eldoret International Airport for the 12-hour flight to Amsterdam.

“Flying, that was something,” he said in a tone still tinged with wonder.

“We got on the plane at dusk and I got a window seat,” he said and watched the familiar highlands of his home vanish into the darkness.

During the flight things got even stranger for the young man when the stewardess handed him a cold salad for his in-flight meal.

“I thought they were giving me flowers.”

By the time Kemboi landed in the Low Countries he was thoroughly disoriented. “Everybody walked where I grew up,” he said. Rides on a bus, or car, were rare things; a ride on an intercontinental jetliner a revelation.

Kemboi has the classic silhouette of a distance runner narrow through the hips and shoulders but has surprisingly long and delicate fingers.

“I didn’t run in high school,” Kemboi said. “I was concentrating on school work because I wanted to go to university, and we didn’t have money for things like training shoes.”

He wanted to win a government scholarship to attend college. “But my grades weren’t quite good enough,” he said.

He still wanted the education, so he applied to a runner training camp and was accepted.

While Kemboi was training at Chepkero athletic camp in 2008 for his eventual journey to Spartanburg violence broke out in Eldoret following a presidential election.

A mob attacked a church there where people were taking refuge and news reports at the time said at least 40 were burned to death.

His connection to USC Upstate came through Chepkero, Blackwelder said. “We had a young woman (from Kenya) with us at the time and she knew about Gilbert at Chepkero.”

Kemboi loves running, but he hopes to go on with his education. He’s majoring in sociology and wants to get a master’s degree and perhaps a doctorate.

“Maybe I could become a professor,” he said. He has a 3.5 GPA.

Most of all, he’d like to see his family again. Kemboi has two brothers and three sisters that he’s not seen in two years.

“Airfare is $1,600,” said Blackwelder. “That’s a lot of money for a kid like Gilbert.”