Coach, basketball player share unlikely connection

AIKEN --- Longtime USC Aiken soccer coach Ike Ofoje has always regularly attended Pacers basketball games.

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Rainier Ehrhardt/Staff

Ike Ofoje (left), USC Aiken men's soccer coach, and Kingsley Oguchi, a guard on the basketball team, discovered two summers ago that their families are from the same village in Nigeria.

Now, he has a vested interest.

Two summers ago, the Nigerian native learned he and Kingsley Oguchi, a senior guard on the basketball team, are more than just members of the same athletic department. They're related -- sort of.

"To me, it's a joy knowing that in my position I have the chance to mentor somebody who is like my son," Ofoje said. "It's wonderful. I can't get over it."

"When I first found out, it blew my mind," said Oguchi, a Houston native. "It's such a small world. How did both of us end up in Aiken?"

Ofoje left Nigeria for the United States in the late 1980s to play soccer at New Hampshire College. He became the USC Aiken men's soccer coach in 1996.

Oguchi came to USC Aiken in 2005, when coach Vince Alexander was beginning to turn the men's basketball program around.

In their first two years together in Aiken, Oguchi and Ofoje knew each other, but that was the extent of their relationship. In 2007, Ofoje learned his mother and Oguchi's paternal grandmother are from the same small village in Umoji, Anambra, Nigeria -- the equivalent of finding out two direct relatives are from the same small neighborhood thousands of miles away.

Ofoje said most of the people in the village are related and that he and Oguchi are like cousins. Following the revelation, an excited Ofoje made a key for the basketball star and let him know he's welcome to come over any time.

"It's almost like I have to treat him like he's my own son," Ofoje said. "It's a cultural thing.

"We still believe in that principle that it takes a village to raise a kid."

Ofoje learned of his kinship with Oguchi two summers ago at an annual convention of Umoji natives in Houston. One of Ofoje's former high school classmates had a conversation with Kingsley Oguchi's father, Godwin, who mentioned his son went to college in South Carolina.

Ofoje soon received a call from Godwin.

"I said 'Don't tell me Kingsley is your son,' " Ofoje said.

The pair talked for an hour. Ofoje got off the phone and soon relayed the message to Alexander.

"I said I just cannot comprehend that," Ofoje said. "This is different. This is unbelievable."

Since learning of his relationship, Oguchi has been to Ofoje's office more and his house once. Oguchi said he'd visit more, but Ofoje lives on the other side of town.

"Now I know for sure I have somebody here. If anything goes wrong, I already know where to go," Oguchi said.

Oguchi, whose parents both are from Nigeria, grew up in the United States. He's visited Nigeria a handful of times and has dual citizenship.

One of eight USC Aiken players to score 1,000 or more points in his career, Oguchi is on track to graduate in May. He plans to join his brother, Chamberlain, playing in the World Championships this summer for the Nigerian national team.

"It's just a different aspect of life. A lot of people don't see other parts of the world and think that what they see on National Geographic is how Africa and how Nigeria is," Oguchi said. "It's not like that at all. Nigeria is a great place to be."

Reach Chris Gay at (706) 823-3645 or chris.gay@augustachronicle.com.