David Kenga is the founder and owner of the Elite Soccer Academy in the USA, which he established in 2016.
The academy, which is based in South Carolina, has evolved to become one of the best private football academies in the world, having trained over 1200 players and more than 50 coaches.
Kenga also belongs to a select group of very few Kenyans who have the US Soccer National A-Youth Coaching License, the highest in the USA’s youth soccer.
This is his journey as told by WoK:
Background
David Kenga was born and raised in the Kizingo area of Mombasa.
He attended the Mombasa Primary School, after which he proceeded to the Allidina Visram High School, where he sat for his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) in 2000 and scored a B+.
“I grew up in Kizingo. First we used to live at GTI where we used to play soccer at Aga Khan Grounds, then we later moved to Customs and shifted our practicing base to Mbaraki and Kongoboys,” he said in an interview.
He said that his current success is as a result of the challenges he went through when growing up in Kizingo.
After sitting for his KCSE in 2000, Kenga started participating in active football. He joined Coast Stars as a player before moving to Tusker FC between 2000 and 2001.
Between 2001 and 2002, he played for Thika United before he got a scholarship to go and further his studies in the United States.
In 2003, he left Kenya for the USA and joined Winthrop University to study biochemistry. There, he played college football for three years.
In 2006, Kenga returned to Kenya and was saddened to find that many of his childhood friends and classmates had succumbed to drugs and alcoholism.
This prompted him to set up a football academy in Tezo, Kilifi County.
“Some of my colleagues were ravaged by drugs and other social vices, and I took it upon myself to see how I can start my own outreach to try and change things by donating equipment here and there to try and motivate the kids and keep them off the streets,” he said.
Academic and sports
According to Kenga, anyone who excels in sports should also strive to excel in academics, since it is also a major consideration that top teams look for when scouting for talent.
He reckoned that Kenya has a lot of sports talent, but many of them do ot want to go to school.
In his case, he stated that his parents, especially his father, who was a doctor, urged him to focus on his studies rather than just focusing on football.
His scholarship to study in the USA resulted from an encounter with former Harambee Stars defender and Gor Mahia coach Bob Oyugi, who was highly impressed with his KCSE performance.
Coach Oyugi is also credited with establishing a sports sponsorship program in 1997 that has benefited various Harambee Stars veterans like Allan Odhiambo, Paul Oyuga, Erick ‘Kantona’ Ochieng, and Vincent Kwarula.
“There are so many of us who have gone there and studied. We have Gerald Origi, Tom Odhiambo, John ‘Baresi’ Odhiambo, Simon Mulama, and now they are doing well,” said Kenga.
He added that Odipo is a professor in the US, while Baresi owns a company that makes soccer balls.
Kenga’s football academy equips children as young as two years old with football skills, training drills, and football challenges.
“My plan is to bring coaches from the USA to recruit players and make the coast a hub for player recruitment,” he said.