A Nigerian with big dreams
He arrived at OCP with limited football experience. Now Peter Agabe is headed to play at an FBS school.
As a young boy in Nigeria, Peter Agabe wanted to play football so badly that he did so without a face mask.
It wasn’t by choice. Neither Agabe nor those around him knew how to attach the crucial piece of facial protection to the helmet.
“We finally figured out how to put it in,” Agabe said. “We put it in, and it was like, ‘That’s good.’ We just didn’t know how sometimes, but the equipment really helped us to feel like, to fall in love with the U.S. game we’d been seeing.” Agabe is on the rise. Despite a small sample size of football experience, Agabe recently signed a national letter of intent to play with Charlotte, a school in North Carolina that plays in Conference USA in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
It’s a rapid ascent for a young man who came to America for the first time only three years ago, thrusting himself into a world 6,000 miles from home and into a culture and sport he was forced to learn quickly. He left his family behind in a quest to help them financially.
Agabe’s large family farmed, mostly corn and grains, but it often wasn’t enough. If Peter and his siblings ate lunch, sometimes it meant going without dinner.
Agabe should have been more concerned with video games instead of his next meal. Instead, he wanted to find a way to help. He settled on football.
“I had this mindset that even if you don’t see the light through the tunnel, sometimes you’ve just got to turn the light on,” Agabe said. “You’ve just got to be the light in the tunnel.
“I didn’t care what people were saying to me. ‘I’m living an empty dream. There’s no football in my country. Nobody knows about football. Why am I wasting my time going to practice?’ ”
Agabe’s indoctrination into football began when he was 10 years old. He watched YouTube videos. Not realizing what position he eventually would call home, he performed drills suitable for all of them.
He discovered an organization called American Football for African Mission (AFFAM) that was founded in 2010 and attempted to grow the sport on a continent far from its roots. Agabe was a willing student, but he only could grow so much without proper coaching and game experience.
It was time to come United States.
Agabe landed
2016.
“When he got here, he was probably 187 pounds,” Darryl Waller said. “They were advertising him over in Nigeria as this 6-3 dude, probably 220-some pounds. I don’t know what happened. He was stressing so much about how to get here, he worried all his weight off.”
Waller, a former football coach, provided Agabe with a home and shared his knowledge. They worked out together. They watched football, with Waller asking in to the Titusville in |
Agabe questions he was seeing.
Those pop-quiz sessions provided Agabe with a springboard, a jumping-off point. All he needed was a team that saw beyond his inexperience and recognized his potential.
Waller and Agabe searched for the right fit. They found Orlando Christian Prep, a private school on Semoran Boulevard.
“We were probably five or six games into the season,” Warriors coach Guerschom Demosthenes said. “He had to be cleared through the FHSAA. That took a couple of weeks. The young man only came and played four football games for us. The learning gap was really big.”
OCP placed Agabe on the defensive line and issued him one directive: Find the player with the ball.
Agabe understood that. Other aspects of the sport, such as the rules, required patience. At first, he did not grasp what offsides meant or what a personal foul was.
Agabe was nervous and excited during his first game.
“I was feeling the good energy of playing football,” he said.
Demosthenes recalled a game against OCP’s rival. The running back ran to one side of the field, away from Agabe, then reversed direction.
Like two asteroids, they collided. Agabe delivered a hit with such pulverizing force that the running back’s helmet flew off.
“We’re looking at each other, like, ‘Oh, my goodness, he’s going to hurt somebody,’ ” Demosthenes said. “He was pretty much unblockable at our level.”
After his brief time at OCP, Agabe played one season at ASA College in Miami in 2017. He switched to outside linebacker.
In six games, Agabe was credited with 5.5 sacks, five forced fumbles and 30 tackles.
He moved on to Georgia College last year.
“The energy and attitude were the two things that really every day, he always had,” Georgia Military coach Bert Williams said. “It wasn’t one day on, one day off. Every day.”
Agabe added seven more sacks in 10 games to his burgeoning résumé, along with 36 tackles (10 for loss) and two forced fumbles.
As a pass rusher with natural ability, Agabe appealed to larger schools.
“Every day, I pray to God,” he said. “Just one offer. Give me the offer that is best for me. I had a lot of interest, but none of them pulled the trigger for me.”
The opportunity arrived after Charlotte’s former coaching staff — the 49ers fired their head coach, Brad Lambert, in November — recruited another Georgia Military player.
Linebacker Luke Martin, who played as a freshman with Charlotte in 2018, vouched for Agabe’s ability.
Eight years after leaving Africa, Agabe received the offer from an about what Military Peter Agabe hadn’t played organized football until 2016.
FBS school long.
“[He] doesn’t get to see his folks anymore, but he came over here with a dream and purpose,” Martin said. “I know he ain’t played ball long, but he’s a very good athlete, can move very well.”
Agabe has fleshed out his 6-foot-2 frame, thanks to expanding
that
he
sought
for so his diet to American staples.
Back home, when he wasn’t forced to skip meals, he often ate loads of rice and bread. Here, he learned about the satisfying effects of pizza and lasagna.
Now Agabe weighs about 221 pounds, but even as he has gotten bigger, his goals never changed. They remained outsize the whole time.
He wants to become an AllAmerican (“first team”). Agabe plans to earn a degree in construction management.
And the biggest of all? include some Orlando Sentinel |
Agabe dreams name introduced
NFL Draft pick.
“I know that God has brought me here for a reason, and getting there, it’s something I can do,” Agabe said. “Those in the NFL don’t have two heads. They have the same head I’ve got, and they’ve got the same body I’ve got, so all I have to do is work to get there.
“I’m telling you. With God my side, I’m getting there.” of hearing his as a first-round by