Catching up with Ba Blamo, the Liberian refugee and former Grand Ledge star is 25 and playing Division III football

LANSING – This isn’t the journey Ba Blamo imagined for himself when he burst onto the scene as a track star and running back at Grand Ledge eight years ago. But he’s grateful for it.

Blamo’s dreams of playing college football didn’t include Concordia College, a Division III school in Moorhead, Minnesota, a stone’s throw from North Dakota. He didn’t think he’d be entering his senior season at age 25.

“It wasn’t what I wanted, but it taught me a lot,” Blamo said last week, during a visit home to Lansing ahead of the start of practice. “Before you get to where you want to be, you have to struggle, you have to go through a lot of stuff. And, also, it taught me to appreciate the littlest things.”

You might remember Blamo at Grand Ledge. He could sprint 100 meters in 11 seconds. He was a ferocious running back for the Comets’ football team. A refugee who, as an infant, escaped war-torn Liberia for the Ivory Coast, then arrived in Lansing with his mother and siblings in 2004, when he was 7.

In high school, Blamo had a warmth to him off the field, but found football to be a place he could unleash his anger and pain, most of which came not from his earliest memories, but from struggles to adapt to a new world that he and his family didn’t understand.

After a run-in with Lansing police and briefly being removed from his mother’s care as a young teenager, Blamo understood, even then, that his best chance at a good life was to spend his high school years in a different environment.

FROM 2014: Grand Ledge's Ba Blamo finds violent peace in football

He’d become close with then-Grand Ledge football coach Matt Bird, whose son played for the same AAU basketball program, and began hanging around Delta Township and Grand Ledge with some of his new friends. One of those friends, Austin Shattuck, was the son of Gary and Suzanne Morris, who noticed that Ba “didn’t seem like he had anywhere to go,” Gary said in 2014.

Gary, a retired corrections officer, and Suzanne, an administrative law judge, eventually became Blamo’s legal guardians, with the blessing of Blamo’s mother, Orena. To this day, he refers to both Orena and Suzanne as “Mom”. Gary became “Pops”.

Life was better then, easier to a degree. But, for a kid whose first language wasn’t American English and had spent his entire academic career behind, catching up academically in Grand Ledge proved to be too much for Blamo to qualify to play college football right out of high school. Thus began Blamo’s trek to Moorhead, Minnesota.

He took a semester off after high school, then, in the winter of 2017, enrolled at Independence Community College in Kansas — a school whose football program is known for being the subject of the Netflix docuseries “Last Chance U.” It’s a program full of Division I talent. Ba was there just before the filming began in June of 2017, just for the spring semester and spring practice. Given all the talent around him, he was surprised when a coach told him, “You’ve got speed, kid. You might get some playing time.”

But in February of that year, Gary Morris passed away after an illness. Blamo was devastated. He didn’t understand how ill Gary was until the call came.

Gary had been Blamo’s No. 1 fan and confidant since taking him in. Gary had described their relationship as “having some father-and-son moments, but I’m mostly like a brother to him.”

“All he really asks is to have his back,” Gary said in 2014.

Gary had that and Blamo felt it.

“As soon as I came out of practice (in high school), we’d sit on the couch and talk,” Blamo said last week. “He was so interested in my well-being.”

Blamo returned to school in Kansas after Gary’s funeral, but left a while later. “This isn’t for me,” he thought.

He flirted with going to Hope College and then Olivet College, both Division III programs, but he’d need more community college credits to do so.

In October of 2017, thinking he was done with football, Blamo moved to Fargo, North Dakota, to live with his older sister, Agnes. He got a job as a dishwasher and line cook at a local restaurant. Every night after work, he’d shower and sit in front of the TV and watch football highlights.

His sister noticed.

“She was like, ‘Ba, you know there are a couple of schools over here. You can try out if you want. I can take you over there and talk with you on behalf of mom.’ I was like, ‘It’s not working anymore.’ ” Blamo recalled. “She literally dragged me out of the house. When we went there. She sat down with the coaches (at Concordia Moorhead) and said, ‘What can I do to have my brother come and play football?’ It's all her.”

After spending a semester at a nearby community college to meet NCAA requirements, Blamo was a student and on the team at Concordia College, which can’t offer athletic scholarships, but can offer need-based scholarships, which, for Blamo, covered entirely the hefty tuition.

“He wanted a fresh start,” said Concordia Moorhead head coach Terry Horan, who’s entering his 22nd season. “He still wanted to get a college education and he wanted to play some football.”

Blamo is on track to finish his degree in political science this December, after playing one final season of college football.

'Things for him here haven't been the easiest'

It all sounds like a heckuva bow on a journey for a young man who eight years ago said this:

“The only thing I ask for is to get that one chance to play college football. And have my mom be able to look on TV and say, ‘Your son is not the type to stay in the street and get in trouble.’ "

Blamo has shown that. He’s chased his dreams and adjusted them when life has delivered roadblocks. He’s been lucky that, to an extent, people have looked out for him, when, for many who grow up like him — without parents who understand how to navigate life in this country — are left to figure things out on their own. Blamo had speed worth utilizing and a kind heart that drew people to him. He was easy to notice. Easy to like.

“He’s such a sweet young man. He’s got a heart of gold,” Horan said. “And, obviously, he’s a specimen, too.”

But while Concordia-Moorhead has been a blessing for Blamo, the ride hasn’t been a fairytale.

“Things in his time here haven’t been the easiest for him,” Horan continued.

When Blamo arrived, the Cobbers ran a triple-option offense, which wasn’t ideal for Blamo, who, with a chiseled 205-pound frame and a straight-ahead running style, was used primarily as a fullback. But, with three running backs on the field at once, playing fullback came with lots of playing time.

“I used to get my clocked cleaned,” Blamo said. “As soon as I’d get the ball in the triple-option, I’m hit. I’m not built to be a fullback.”

The Cobbers’ changed offensive coordinators and offenses after Blamo’s freshman year, and, when they returned to the field in 2021 — after a season dormant during the height of the pandemic — they were running a single-back spread offense, which fit Blamo better, but left him in a battle for playing time.

He carried the ball 52 times for 218 yards and two touchdowns over eight games in 2019, and just 14 times for 48 yards in three games last season.

And, in-between, for a while, he quit the team.

“I was so mad. The new (offensive coordinator) would not play me,” Blamo said. “As I’ve grown up, I’ve realized, ‘Ba, maybe you went about this the wrong way.’ I went to the coaches, accepted my responsibility for where I messed up. I told them, regardless if you’re going to play me, I want to be on the team to support my brothers. They gave me a second chance.”

It’s unclear how much playing time Blamo will see this season.

“He’s got a few guys that are in front of him,” said Horan, who described the talent in his program as including plenty of guys who could have played Division II football and a few that could have gone the Division I route. “He's competitive. He wants to get on the field and we've got a lot of good kids, including him. It just hasn't always been paved perfectly for him. But I know this, that he absolutely loves being a part of the team. He’ll do anything for his teammates and he works his tail off.”

Admittedly, it took Blamo a while to adjust to the Division-III world, where, unlike at the Division-I level — and even at Independence in Kansas, which is mostly Division I prospects — the responsibility to train, to study, etc., falls on you.

“You have that responsibility solely on yourself,” Blamo said. “And if it doesn’t force you to grow up, you’re not going to make it.

“I really do like the school, especially the teachers. They have been exceptional.”

Blamo lives off campus now, in his own apartment in Fargo, which is a five-minute drive across the North Dakota border from Concordia. He likes Fargo. It has a relatively large Liberian population, which means plenty of restaurants serve the food he grew up with at home, in Lansing.

'Everything about Lansing is home to me'

Blamo isn’t done living in Michigan or Lansing. He beams when he talks about a place where life was once pretty difficult. His mother Orena is still here. She works overnights at Sparrow Hospital. She was thrilled to see him when she got home from work last week, his first trip home in a year. Her life isn’t necessarily easier now, but it’s more organized, Blamo said.

He plans to come back to Lansing after he finishes school. Five of his 10 siblings still live in the area. Even friends in Lansing he knew he needed to leave behind for a while as a young teenager are part of the charm and love he feels toward this place.

“It’s home and that’s never going to change,” Blamo said. “My mom’s here. My family’s been here ever since we came from Africa. Everything about Lansing is home to me. I still imagine the streets I used to walk on as a snotty-nosed little kid.

“There are kids I grew up with that didn’t have a better life. Some were in a gang and doing stuff like that. They take care of their own. Every time I trying to hang out with them, they say, ‘You can’t hang out with us’ or ‘You can’t do this. You’ve got a future, Blamo.’ When something’s going on in the street, ‘You don’t want to go there, partner.’ They look out. And that’s what makes a home a home, people who look out for you, respect you.”

He’s got his adopted family, too. He went to their cottage with them last week to catch up and be together.

Blamo isn’t sure exactly what he’ll do with his degree yet. He also isn’t sure he’s done with football. He might try out for the USFL or another minor league.

“I love it too much. It’s in my bones,” he said.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Former Grand Ledge standout Ba Blamo, 25, is playing Division III football