FROM LUSAKA TO LEXINGTON: The Life of an International Student-Athlete at W&L
Story and photos by Seamus Watters | Design by Simona Radeva
W&L’s Victor Ndhlovu practices on the field.
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ashington and Lee University and Connecticut College had battled nearly the entire match, with no goals scored by either team, when W&L midfielder Victor Ndhlovu brought down a high pass with his foot. Two opponents converged, forcing him to fight his way through to make space to pass the ball to an open teammate. The move began a sequence that involved two other players and led to the Generals’ only goal of the men’s NCAA Division III soccer Final Four in December 2021. “He had to fight off half of Conn College. He pushed through a tough window and made a really great pass,” said midfielder Grant McCarty, who received the ball and got it to forward Adrian Zimmerman to score the goal. “It was probably his best play of the season. It came when the team needed it.” The momentum shift didn’t last, and W&L lost the match, ending an historic season. The team was 20
ranked No. 1 nationally throughout the season and was undefeated going into the second round of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference tournament. But the Generals lost in an upset to Randolph College. The team then received a No. 1 seed at-large invitation to the NCAA tournament. Ndhlovu’s journey to Lexington, Virginia, began in his hometown of Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. By the time he was 7, Ndhlovu was playing soccer with his friends, dreaming about joining the Zambian Men’s National Football Team. But in high school, he realized he wasn’t going to play professional soccer. That’s when he turned his sights to college—in the United States. “The older you get, the more you start to come to terms with the truth, I guess,” Ndhlovu said. “But at least I’m here.” In his sophomore year of high
school, he accepted that he probably wouldn’t play pro soccer at home, and reached out to the Zambian Institute for Sustainable Development, a nonprofit group in Zambia. The organization encourages young people like him to pursue educations in other countries and return to help develop solutions to Zambia’s social, economic and technological problems. The organization then sent videos of him playing soccer to recruiters who act as go-betweens for athletes and colleges. “I told them I either wanted to play soccer or track. I gave them my times, showed them some video,” he said. His recruitment to W&L is typical of how international athletes wind up playing collegiate sports, like soccer and track. Ndhlovu said he noticed first that soccer in the U.S. is more physical