How a leap of faith led Tyrone Taleni from Samoa to USC for a sport he never played
Tyrone Taleni took a football leap of faith from Samoa to USC - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
BY RYAN KARTJE, STAFF WRITERFOLLOW, JUNE 27, 2022 4:30 AM PT
Until his cousin, Bernard Afutiti, visited from the mainland nearly five years ago, the notion of playing college football had never occurred to Tyrone Taleni. And why would it? Taleni didn’t know football. He’d neither played nor spent any time watching the sport. Sure, football might be ingrained into the cultural fabric of nearby American Samoa, but on his home island of
Savai’i, the western-most island in independent Samoa, rugby was still king.
When it came to rugby, Taleni was a natural. In his small mountain village of Vaiola, they played most days when school was out and the chores were done, sending punt after punt soaring over unspoiled paradise. Over the years, his family had carved out their own slice of this island oasis, living off the land, tending to chicken and cattle and pigs on a family homestead, where cacao, taro, bananas and mangoes grew plentifully.
His connection to the village ran deep, but after spending two years on a mission in Arkansas, Taleni returned to Vaiola in 2017 uncertain of his next steps. That’s when Afutiti and his wife, Crystal, came to the island for a visit.
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It was Afutiti, a former college football player, who first floated the idea, planting a seed that would send Taleni careening down an unlikely path in an unfamiliar sport. Afutiti figured his cousin’s rugby talent might translate. Never in his wildest dreams did he believe that conversation would, years later, lead Taleni to USC
He knew Taleni had designs on becoming a doctor, to help bring better medical access to Samoa. But pursuing that plan meant leaving the island for a higher education in the States, and college was costly. “He didn’t want to put any more burdens on his parents,” Afutiti says.
So Afutiti suggested football: “I told him it was probably his best way to earn a free education,” he said.
Taleni told his cousins he would pray on it.
A few weeks later, Taleni boarded a plane to California. He hasn’t been back to Samoa since.
“I was all-in,” Taleni said. “I didn’t know much about football at the time or how the education system works out here, or anything like that, but just the idea of him saying, ‘Come out here and try school, try football, you never know what might happen,’ I was very excited. … I guess, you could say it was a big leap of faith, leaving everything and not knowing what could happe
A few more leaps of faith would be required before Taleni found himself sitting across from Lincoln Riley in his office last January, including a big one from USC’s coach. Taleni was not exactly a proven commodity. He played fewer than 100 snaps of Power Five football over two years at Kansas State, where Riley first saw him when he was Oklahoma’s coach. Something in his film had given Riley faith.
“When you started to research him, the worker, his journey in football, it kind of made sense. The snaps he did play, we saw some things that we thought were intriguing,” Riley said. “But the more we found out about him, we were confident in the kind of kid we were bringing in here.”
Sitting with the coach and her cousin in Riley’s office, cousin Tutasi Asuega-Matavao could barely contain herself. She asked the coach if she could snap a selfie to commemorate the occasion, much to Taleni’s chagrin.
Their whole family had grown up as avid USC fans. Now Taleni was a Trojan? Seriously?
“It still blows our mind,” Asuega-Matavao said. “Like, how is this kid doing this.
Good post, keep ‘em coming amigo.