Lauren Ceballos / Sports Editor

“Be where  your feet are at,” USD football coach Sam Anno  told Al-Rilwal Adeyemi throughout his football career at USD.  

    Adeyemi or “Ade” for short graduated USD class in 2012. Ade was born in Nigeria by a newer American citizen, his father. Ade’s family was adamant about his initial upbringing being in Nigeria and settled that the age of ten would be a good time for him to go to the U.S., allowing him to be bilingual.

   “I could have come at any age, but my parents decided that ten would be the perfect age to still learn everything I needed to in Nigeria, which is family, religion, ethics, morals and hunger. And that 10 was the perfect age where I could still integrate myself within the American society and further my studies,” Ade expressed.

 Growing up, Ade lived with a multitude of family members, designed by his parents’ hope of providing a humbling, cultural experience.

   “I would live in a city for two or three years that I would be sent to the village to live with grandparents that would be back to the city and sent to the village and as I went back and forth, back and forth, so the humbleness that you get in a village is different than the city life. I went to a private school in the city. I went to military school in the city. I went to a normal school in the village… so I got an experience of everything,” Ade explained.

     When     referencing      his career, one may  assume  that  Ade has played football for his whole life.However, he expressed otherwise. In Nigeria, the national sport is soccer which he grew up playing as well as tennis, ping pong and cricket, which all aided in his physicality and athletic abilities. While Ade did not know the rules of football, he explained how these experiences helped with the game.

    “I had a set of skills that were easily transferable and they translated to some of the new rounds and detailed things that you need to be doing with football. For example, soccer helped tremendously with my conditioning in football, tennis helped with eye coordination,” Ade said.

      Ade explained that the biggest struggle was getting used to the physicality of football when he began his football career at Santa Monica High School.

   “I  didn’t  know  anything about the sport really until that Super Bowl, when I was 13. The Raiders Tampa Bay Buccaneers Super Bowl, and then I started playing football,” Ade said.

      Ultimately,   Ade   was  able to use his four years of high school to prepare for college ball, which he played at USD. While studying Political Science and Marketing, Ade achieved many awards on the field: All-PFL First Team Defense, Team Captain and Defensive MVP, PFL Defensive Player of the Week, PFL Freshman Defensive Player of the Year, All-PFL Second Team and USD Most Outstanding 1st Year Player Award.

    After his time at USD, Ade was hoping to be drafted into the NFL. Despite the pros showing interest, Al-Rilwal Adeyemi’s name was not called in the 2012 draft, but he was instead invited to a camp with the New York Giants and, later on, the Detroit Lions told him to stay in shape and they may call him.

  Ade knew that he could not go two years without playing football, so he became resourceful and decided to play in the pro-league for Japan, taking one out of four spots for foreign players on Japan’s teams. 

  Ade joined Japan’s team Fujitsi, one of the contenders for the Japan X Bowl, equivalent to the Super Bowl. Two weeks into his time in Japan, Ade’s coach planned for the team to climb Mt. Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan, as preparation and hopes of winning the championship of the league, as Ade was hoping to get a call from the NFL after winning. 

       However,    the    course   of events looked different after Mt. Fuji. While hiking, Ade started to feel abdominal pain and knew he had to go down the mountain.

After going in and out of the hospital with his coach by his side due to his family being so far away, Adeyemi lost 14 pounds of muscle, due to the sickle cell trait and when he was climbing, his body began to work against him.

     “It’s a predominantly African American trait. So the Japanese hospital, they don’t see cases of that. They’ve never met a doctor that had ever seen it. He’d only seen it in school,” Ade shared.

     His mom, a nurse, asked one of her friends who was a doctor to call the doctor in Japan and work to help heal Ade.

   “I was in the middle of this medical exchange between a Japanese doctor and an American internal medicine specialist. And a deputy doctor was so happy to know, he’s like, ‘I’m probably one of you know, 10 doctors in Japan, they get to have this experience.’ And so to this day, he’s still very thankful that I gave him that experience but on the other side, I’m like, ‘no, no, no. I’m thankful for you.’ So the humility within that process was amazing as well,” Ade expressed.

   About a week later, he was discharged and headed back to his team. The team developed a training plan to get him back into shape and build his muscle back with a six-week program. 

Ade explained how he felt due to the help of his coach throughout his recovery process.

   “I felt like I owed him an unspoken debt. In the end, I felt a high sense of gratitude. Not so it was just him though, but his wife as well. It was to have their family and it was just that I felt like I almost became like a part of their family,” Ade said.

       In the last three minutes of the 2013 Championship game between the Obic Seagulls and the Fujitsu Frontiers, Obic won. Ade was in shock and felt bad for not winning the game for his coach. The next morning, he woke up to missed calls from the Detroit Lions due to a defensive back getting injured at training camp. The coaches told him to get there that night and that he would be ready to play the next day.

     “So that ultimately the NFL was always the goal, right? It’s the dream. It’s the pinnacle of our sport. So when the whole Mount Fuji experience happened I wanted to win for Fajita San, the coach, because I felt like I owed him an unjust. It’s an unspoken debt, right? It’s someone does you a really, really huge favor and if you feel like you’re indebted to them, it’s unspoken. They don’t hold it over your head but it’s unspoken. I intended with the help of my teammates to win the championship and then work my way back to America to continue further the NFL dreams. So that was the big picture for me,” Ade explained his decision. 

   Ade decided to remain with Fujitsi not only due to the unspoken debt and the family that he had found on the team throughout his recovery process, but also due to his falling in love with the Japanese culture. Whether it was the structure, the company teams, where Japan X league players worked for the companies of their teams, practiced and played for them, he found a new home.

     “Japan fits my personality   very well. It’s a clean society. It’s a respectful society. It’s a structure in society… I used to have a coach at USD actually, his name was Sam Otto, and he used to say a very simple but a very powerful quote. He used to say ‘Be where your feet are at.’ And it’s just, you know, be present… Once the whole Mount Fuji thing happened and I let myself be present in Japan, rather than looking at the next opportunity. I started to appreciate it for what it was.”

    The NFL 360 documentary about Ade is entitled “Ikigai,” meaning “Doing what you love and loving what you do and getting paid for it,” Ade said. 

   In Japan, Ade attested to finding just that and a harmony that he was looking for in his life. His Islamic faith, his parents, his coach and his values led him to decide to stay in Japan where he now attests to flourishing.

     Ade admitted to wondering if he ever did the wrong thing, but ultimately decided otherwise.

    “Having no regrets in life is a big thing. You know, you are where you are supposed to be and faith is a big big thing… if you remove one piece of the equation, maybe I never meet my wife… So it’s just those things that you think where your life is the blessings that you have and you realize that if this didn’t change then this would be here so you can’t live with any regrets because you are so thankful for where you are today, again be where your feet are at,” Ade said.

     While Ade’s dream of joining the NFL might be seen as not coming true, he admitted that the call showed the interest in him as a player and helped with the completion of his story. 

    “I did get the call that I was waiting for. But I think you know now that the NFL did a documentary about it, it came full circle. I did a Good Morning Football interview… and the first joke that I made was, ‘It took me going all the way to Japan for Good Morning Football to call,’” Ade laughed.

  Adeyemi found his path when he  stopped looking and is living his dream in Japan.

Adeyemi (right) got the call from his first love the NFL, while accidentally falling in love with Japan. Photo courtesy of @alreal1/Instagram