Metro Roundup: Soccer coach builds library in native Nigeria

When Ike Udeh was growing up in Nigeria, he didn’t have an operational library in his hometown. Lacking that resource, he struggled in school.

Soccer was his way out. It’s what made him a Nigerian national team player and one of the best players in the country’s professional league, and it ultimately brought Udeh to Alabama on a scholarship to Alabama A&M University.

Udeh, who now coaches boys and girls youth teams in the Hoover-Vestavia Soccer Club, for the past three years has been working on another way to give back and influence kids, this time in his home country.

He is building a library in his hometown of Enugu, offering kids the help and resources he didn’t have when he was growing up.

“I knew I was missing out,” Udeh said of his childhood education. There wasn’t much to do in Enugu, so as many boys do, he quickly took to soccer. “I started playing when I was 5 years old,” he said. “I started kicking around on the street. … I started getting really good.”

He played in Nigeria’s professional soccer league and led the league in scoring one year. He also was called up to play for the men’s national team. In 1992, Udeh came to Alabama and played for Alabama A&M from 1992 to 1996, winning numerous conference awards.

He then played about a year with the Kansas City Wizards, a professional soccer team at the time. But a bad car accident fractured his vertebrae, causing him to miss time while he went through physical therapy. Udeh played a few more years before ending his playing career.

While that part of his career ended, Udeh said he used the education he received to help him find a job in Alabama, where he teaches at Charles Hard Elementary School in the Bessemer school system, a job he has held for 22 years. With many students and their families not having much money and being in single-family homes, Udeh said the faces he sees are familiar to him. “Those kids remind me of kids in Nigeria sometimes,” he said.

In addition to coaching youth teams in the Hoover-Vestavia Soccer Club, Udeh also in the past coached high school soccer at Hoover, Mountain Brook and Bessemer City.

But his heart has very much been burdened with the kids in his hometown. The idea of a library came after he drove two hours in Enugu and didn’t find a single library.

The library he is building will be more of a community resource center than just a collection of books, Udeh said, and the plan is “big.”

He has put together an organization with a board of directors that can help him run everything smoothly.

“I want it to be a place where kids can go in and be safe,” Udeh said.

The library will offer kids a place to sit down, read and learn, without having to look over their shoulder, worrying about the ongoing violence in the country, Udeh said.

Seeing how his education at A&M offered him career opportunities, Udeh realized that he needed to help other children in Nigeria who may not have soccer as a way out.

“Not everyone’s going to play professional soccer,” Udeh said. “They just don’t have opportunities and resources that American kids have. … What can I do to ensure that these kids don’t make some of the same mistakes we made?”

Udeh encourages children in Nigeria to stay in school and get the best education they can. A library is a great way to ensure they can do that.

“It’s something that won’t go away,” Udeh said.

Udeh offered sessions of soccer training and did extra work to raise funds. Work on the library began in 2017, and the library now is about 90% built, he said.

People have donated books and have been “so nice and so good,” Udeh said. “I get emotional when I talk about it. … People are still giving.”

Udeh said he has received more than 1,000 books. He’d also like the library to offer science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics classes and other things to help children.

He has been able to go to Nigeria and see the library under construction and the kids it will help, and said it gives him perspective.

“We take a lot for granted,” Udeh said. “This is a big thing for me to be able to help provide this for the kids.”

Udeh said in the future, he wants to see what he can do to help children in the Birmingham metro area as well.

People looking for ways to help can visit ikeudehfoundation.org and can offer financial support and look for volunteer opportunities down the road, including legal counsel, accounting and other things, said Rick Claypoole, who is helping Udeh with the foundation.