Flashes of Panic

While I was in Japan, I talked with another journalist who is very active in promoting Kenyan athletes. You wouldn’t think they’d need promotion, but what he’s generally focused on is image control: communicating individual personalities (as opposed to a faceless group, “the Kenyans,”) and understanding of the backgrounds from which these stellar athletes emerge—the relative poverty, the farms, the bare-bones training camps.

One of his most recent projects is using athletic ability to get talented students accepted and/or funded at American colleges and universities better known for their academics. More than a few Kenyans have run on athletic scholarship at NCAA Division I universities; this effort is focusing on sending the best Kenyan students to Ivies and some Division III schools, none of which offer athletic scholarships. He talked to me about one of these students, who he was trying to connect with the College, but who had also had interest from M.I.T.

“Prestige is a problem,” he explained. “The only schools they know by name are M.I.T., Harvard, and ‘Ya-lay’.”

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