A young Kisute Kiboko recalled visiting with his brother-in-law after he returned to the African nation of Tanzania from the United States and hearing tales of sports and the scholarships that were available for school. Kiboko then asked if it were possible for him to receive a scholarship as well. His brother-in-law, who was attending school in El Paso at the time, said that he would look around.

A list of schools, one of which was Wayland Baptist, was all Kiboko needed to get his journey around the world started.

“I liked Wayland the best because of the background and the history of the school,” Kiboko said. “I wrote a letter to (track and field coach) John Creer and he responded. He said that he liked what I was doing and invited me to come to the U.S.”

Before Kiboko took fellow Hall of Honor member Creer up on his offer, he had to sit down and talk with his parents about whether or not this was something that he really should do.

“I was very young, so when the news came that I had been accepted, I was shocked,” Kiboko said. “I talked with my mom and dad after I heard the news. My dad was skeptical because he had never heard about getting a free education. He said, ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea. They may be trying to fool around with you.’

“My mom said that if they were fooling me around, then I can just come back so I should give it a try. My mom encouraged me, so I decided to come to the United States.”

Coming from Tanzania, Kiboko faced many challenges upon his arrival in the U.S., starting with the first day when his plane landed in Dallas on a wintry January night. Creer picked up his new recruit at the airport where the two stayed the night before driving to Plainview the next morning. Accustomed to tropical weather, when the Tanzanian awoke the next morning he was greeted with his first encounter with snow.

“When I arrived in Dallas the first thing I realized was that the weather was extremely cold,” Kiboko recalled. “The night I flew in it was snowing and when I got up to go run in the morning I put on all that I had brought -- little shorts and a T-shirt.

“There were probably 4-5 inches of snow on the ground, and I thought to myself, ‘What is this stuff on the ground?’ I just went back to my room and waited on coach to come pick me up.”

The snow and cold weather would not be Kiboko’s only hurdles he had to figure out before becoming comfortable with his new home. Kiboko predominately spoke Swahili, and additionally he had to overcome some major culture shocks.

“I knew a little English when I came to the U.S., but I spoke Swahili back home,” he said. “I was wondering how I would be able to excel in a school where everyone spoke another language.”

Thankfully, Kiboko met Charles and Elaine Seagler, who took him into their home and helped him learn the language better.

“I met the Seaglers at First Baptist Church in Plainview. Mrs. Seagler was a teacher at the high school and they had kids that were a few years younger than I was. I would go over there and talk and ask a lot of questions.”

The change in diet also was a major change in Kiboko’s new life. Just like many students remember various experiences in the Wayland cafeteria, Kiboko was no different, but his started on day one.

“I went to the cafeteria and the first thing they served was hot dogs. I thought that it was actual dog meat and said to myself, ‘We don’t eat dog in Tanzania,’ but I saw people eating it so I took it.

“I looked around several times before I actually took a bite, and I was uncomfortable asking anyone about it. I tried it and in my mind I kept thinking, ‘You ate dog meat!’, so I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

“I went to Coach Creer and told him that I could not survive on this food and asked if he could provide a place that I can fix my own food. He said that he would work on it, but people from all over the world are here and eating the food and told me to give it a try while he worked on getting me an apartment.

“I eventually got used to it and loved it to the point where I was forgetting my natural food.”

It was a good thing that Kiboko didn’t head for the hills after a few trying circumstances because he would prove to be one of Wayland’s elite athletes in the track and field program’s illustrious history.

Kiboko came to Wayland at what can be considered its peak, helping win four consecutive team championships at the NAIA Indoor Championships from 1985-88 and earning NAIA All-American honors 13 times.

The middle distance runner held five school records upon graduating in 1989 and still holds records for the indoor two-mile relay set in ’87 with a time of 7 minutes, 42.25 seconds, and the outdoor 4x800, a specialty at WBU, set in ’87 with a time of 7 minutes, 28.43 seconds.

Kiboko was a five-time individual national champion, winning the 1,000-yard run in ’86 and ’87, the distance medley relay in ’88 and ’89, and the two-mile relay in ’89.

Although Kiboko has five national championships to his credit, he specifically remembers his first.

“The first time I won, I told my mom that I had won the national championship,” he said. “She asked me what that was, so I explained to her, and she said she knew I was going to do something big.

“When I told my dad, he said, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ He thought I would be a high jumper, so when he asked what event and I told him it was a running event, he said, ‘Wow. I didn’t even know you were that good at running.' ”

Kiboko was actually excellent at running. In fact, he was world class.

After graduating from Wayland in 1989, Kiboko went back to Tanzania with the intention of becoming a politician. After spending a year trying to get into that field and realizing how difficult it was to get involved in politics, he came back to the U.S. to further his education.

Kiboko returned to Wayland for a stint, but ultimately ended up in Kansas City, Mo. where Nike invited him to run for them professionally. Still looking for a full-time job, Kiboko started to teach physical education and Swahili at a high school in Kansas City starting in 1993.

Kiboko trained locally and was sponsored by Nike to run in Europe and compete in track meets there. Nike provided Kiboko with their equipment and allowed him to keep any winnings he earned while competing.

“I enjoyed running for Nike very much because I was able to teach and I ran while we were out of school,” Kiboko said. “I met a lot of people that I had run against while I was in college and got to travel all over the world. It was a very fun moment in my life.”

While Kiboko was running for Nike he was simultaneously preparing himself for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. When the Tanzanian team arrived in Atlanta the coaches said they had four runners, one of which was Kiboko, qualify for the 1,600 meters, but could only use three runners.

Kiboko had the second-fastest time of the group, but the coaches claimed the other runners had to run on worse conditions in Tanzania so they were going to try and think of a way to settle the situation. They decided that they would let the four runners train for two weeks and then they would have a race with the top three going on to compete in the Olympics.

“In those two weeks I prepared very well,” Kiboko said. “We all lined up to run the 1,600 meters and with about 200 meters to go I was leading so I thought, ‘I want to leave these people as far as I can,’ so I started to pull away from the group.

“With about 50 meters to the tape I felt something on my hamstring and I immediately fell down. The doctor looked at it and said I pulled my hamstring really bad. I could not believe what had happened. I was very disappointed.”

After missing out on his dream of running in the Olympics and with his running career hanging in the balance, Kiboko returned to Kansas City to focus on education where he joined the Navy with the promise that they would give him money to go back to school. 

With a torn hamstring and an aging body, little did he know that he had one last kick in his track and field career.

“I went through physical therapy and the commander said that they have a Navy team and asked if I wanted to compete and told me if I did well they’ll take me to Europe to compete again. I ended up making the Navy team and they sent me to the All-Armed Forces team for the U.S.

“I did that for two years, but it got to the point where I wasn’t enjoying it too much anymore so I decided to stop and finish my master’s degree.”

Kiboko earned his Masters of Business Administration in 2004 and currently is working on his PhD in organizational leadership, which he will finish in September 2015.

Upon graduation, Kiboko plans to finish out his career in the Navy in the next two years and use his education to consult businesses working in the international market.

“I want to be a bridge between Tanzania and the U.S. and other countries such as Japan,” Kiboko said. “I want to help them connect so we’ll have two offices, one in Tanzania and one in Washington, D.C.

“I have a group of people that I’ve been talking with and we’re pulling together a team of people. We have some people in the U.S., some in Tanzania, and we’re even trying to put a team together in Europe.”

In 2002 Kiboko married his wife Getruda, whom he met during a phone call he was having with his sister, and the couple now has two “wonderful boys,” ages 11 and 8.

Kiboko has been and is doing big things across the globe, but it all started when he took a leap of faith to leave his home in Tanzania to run track at Wayland Baptist in Plainview, Texas.