Coach who brought Mwila to U.S. reflects on player’s life
Quinn Casteel
Sports Editor
Following the 2008 fall season as an assistant coach at the University of Akron, current VCU head coach Dave Giffard made his first trip to Zambia to meet Yoram Mwila.
Less than four years later, Coach Giffard made another trip to the Southern African nation, but this time to bid farewell to his star striker in the wake of the worst tragedy to hit the VCU soccer program since the death of Nicole Megaloudis in 2004.
Mwila, a rising senior and unquestioned leader of the VCU men’s soccer team, died from injuries he sustained in a car accident on June 9, just one day after returning to his home country for summer break.
“Sometimes life can be cruel and harsh,” Giffard said about the accident. “As time goes on you encounter not only the very positive highs and the great moments, but you also encounter other aspects of life that aren’t positive and are very difficult to deal with.
“Hopefully this will allow us to appreciate all the gifts that we are given and realize how special every day is, and how fortunate we are to be able to do the things that we love,” he continued.
Four weeks after Mwila’s death, Giffard and the team are still recovering from the loss but continue to carry his spirit with them.
“Yoram was a very special person. He had a very infectious energy for all aspects of life whether it was with his friends, or on the field, or just everybody he interacted with,” Giffard told The CT. “You had a little bigger bounce in your step and a bigger smile because of Yoram’s energy. It was a special gift and a unique quality for someone to have, especially for a young person.”
For Giffard, the man who inspired Mwila’s permanent move to the U.S., the loss was especially hard. The pair had spent the last three years together as a player-coach tandem at Akron for one year and two years at VCU.
Giffard first heard about Mwila from a coach named Desmond Armstrong in 2008, who, at the time, was running a soccer academy for a man named Brad Friedel. Both were U.S. Men’s National Team players who appeared in Olympics and World Cups. Armstrong and Friedel were running an academy affiliated with the Columbus Crew of MLS, and had brought over five Zambian players to be a part of their program.
A couple of the Zambian players came to the U.S. and stayed, and would eventually move on to play professional soccer in other parts of the world – Mwila was one of the ones who did not stay and had gone back to Zambia to be with his family.
Giffard, already in Africa, decided to give Mwila a visit to follow-up and see how he had been doing. After spending
a few days in Zambia getting to know Mwila and his family, Giffard said he was more drawn to his qualities as a person than his skills on the field which were world-class in their own right.
“Not everybody can travel across the world and just pick up as an 18 or 19-year-old kid, in a totally different country with a different language and an entirely different culture, and succeed academically as well,” said Giffard of Mwila.
In Mwila’s first season with Giffard serving as an assistant coach at Akron, the team began the season 23-0 and would eventually go on to lose the national championship game in penalty kicks. Mwila was the team’s No. 3 striker in his rookie season and played significant minutes in every game he was healthy for, despite being behind an All-American future U.S. Men’s National Team member and another future MLS player on the depth chart.
However, Mwila’s talent would eventually drive him to pursue a starting job, so he left Akron and joined Giffard at VCU.
From there, the rest is history – Mwila broke out in a big way from the beginning with the Rams, becoming the team’s second leading scorer in his first season in 2010 and starting 17 of 19 games. In 2011, he and Jason Johnson were a two-headed monster up top for VCU, each playing in all 20 of the team’s matches and together leading the team in scoring with Johnson netting 11 and Mwila once again finishing second with six goals.
“He helped us springboard the transformation of our program,” Giffard said of Mwila. “We were trying to get it back to where we had been and beyond, and eventually win a national championship. He came in and developed quite a bit and put himself in a position here to pursue a professional career.”
“The guys respected him so much. There will be a lot of memories that will stick with me but I think that’s what makes him so special,” said Giffard. “He commanded respect from his teammates but I don’t think he ever got in an argument with anyone.”
A few days after the accident in early June, Giffard flew to Zambia to be with Mwila’s family and friends for his official funeral. He spent the time in Zambia passing along messages from Mwila’s friends in Richmond at VCU and across the U.S., showing them how many lives he had touched in his time in America. Mwila’s family received an array of cards and well-wishes from VCU students, alums, friends, teammates, parents of teammates and others which Giffard was able to hand deliver.
“When you’re in another country for a significant amount of time like he was, especially in this time in your life when you go through so many changes and become a man, in his case, it was great for his family to see all these things,” Giffard said. “There were a lot of pictures and things that allowed his family to see through other people’s eyes how he had grown and the person that he had become.”
After Giffard returned from Zambia, he attended the memorial service in Richmond which was held for Mwila at VCU’s Pace Center. He said the experience brought a good sense of closure to the entire experience and gave the soccer program and entire VCU community a chance to spend time together and remember Mwila.
Closure, however, does not equate to forgetting.
Since the memorial service, the VCU men’s soccer team has been in constant communication, either in person, through social media or texting, continuing to get through the experience together and talking about how they will dedicate the 2012 fall season to their fallen teammate. The team has its own special tributes to Mwila, which they have decided to keep the details of internal, but publicly will wear a No. 9 patch on their uniforms this season. Additionally, they are expecting to have one of their best seasons in recent memory as they build on last year’s success.
“This season is an opportunity for us to break into the upper echelon of college soccer,” Giffard said. “We had a little bit of time last year in the Top 25 and I think we can go a step or two beyond that. The guys had a very successful spring and summer and everyone’s hungry and looking forward to this fall. Yoram will, of course, be on everyone’s minds and hearts over the course of this season and of course we are dedicating the season to him.”
The VCU men’s soccer team begins its fall season with a preseason game at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on August 18, and opens regular season play at home six days later against Bucknell for a 7:30 p.m. match. The team is looking to improve upon an 11-9 finish in 2011 in honor of Mwila’s memory.
