UNC men's soccer player Nyambi Jabang back on field

Nyambi Jabang had no intentions of telling anyone what was wrong.

He couldn’t afford to.

It was his first year on the 2012 North Carolina men’s soccer team — a team coming off of a national championship just a year before and now looking expectantly at an incoming freshman class.

Jabang was a highly touted recruit — ranked No. 52 in the nation by ESPN — and needed to prove what he could do to coach Carlos Somoano and his teammates. Players like Andy Craven were healthy and were already showcasing their abilities in training, making their cases for being on the field.

Jabang remembers the pressure he felt at the time, as he was healing from a torn ACL and starting to deal with this new injury in his right knee.

“I was like, ‘they all heard about Nyambi the African kid that’s coming in, but I know I have to bring something to the table,’” he said. “But I wasn’t ready. My knee wasn’t ready, I could feel it.”

He also felt the competition.

And he had to make his case. So he ignored the pain in his right knee.

“I just put (the pain) behind me,” Jabang said. “I don’t know, it’s all mental. I feel like I’ve been through so much I can’t complain about that. It hurt, I just tried to play through it.”

So Jabang played through the pain for several weeks until a game against Winthrop. After 20 minutes on the field, he figured the coaches had seen enough. He walked off the field and went over to talk to the team’s trainer, Alain Agulair.

Jabang found out exactly what was wrong with him. He’d been playing through a torn meniscus.

Bred through the pain

Jabang learned toughness as a kid growing up in Africa.

Unlike the U.S., Brikama, Gambia has no youth soccer leagues. Before he was ever a teenager, Jabang was playing with men twice his age, much faster and stronger.

“I was playing physical with 25-year-olds,” Jabang said. “You want to play? You just jump in.”

So when Jabang came across the Atlantic in 2007 as a 13-year-old, he realized the opportunities that he would have within the game.

“They put me on the U-13. It was a lot easier for me,” he said. “I was expecting a lot of big things to happen.”

A few years later, Jabang was doing big things.

He set the season goal-scoring record at South Paulding High School (Ga.) with 22. His club team, Cobb FC, won the Disney Soccer Showcase in 2010. But it was never going to be an easy ride for Jabang, and shortly after the Disney Showcase, he tore his left ACL.

The injury put him out for his junior season in high school, and it wasn’t stable during his senior season either. But UNC wanted him to play soccer in college, so he sat out his senior season to try and get healthy for Chapel Hill.

He had no idea how long that would take.

Road to recovery

Agulair remembers the hype that surrounded Jabang when he arrived on campus in 2012.

“I remember this kid came in and he was highly touted as great,” Agulair said.

But he also remembers all of the injuries that set him back. First the torn meniscus. Then, weeks later, a season-ending fractured tibia after colliding with a Wake Forest player. The following January, once he was finally healthy, it was only a matter of days before his left knee abandoned him again. Another ACL tear.

“So the first time he was actually really able to play was last spring in 2014,” Agulair said. “And I just remember, first of all just feeling really bad for this kid he was supposed to be really, really good, but he had one thing after another.

“He was always dealing with something.”

Jabang would meet with Agulair four to five times a week to work on his flexibility and strength. While his teammates were on the field playing games, Jabang was busy going through an extensive ACL recovery regimine.

“We sent him to the sports medicine research lab,” Agulair said. “We had him doing some things like jump-landing and just general movement.

“What they do is, not only look at force plate measurements to kind of see if he’s asymmetrically shifting, but they also look at the motion itself. Is the knee in a position that’s going to predispose him to an injury even so slightly?”

Jabang met with Agulair throughout the week, many times early in the morning, to work on getting back to full health. Through the process, Agulair never heard a word of complaint from Jabang. Never a word about the pain.

“I mean if somebody like that wants to help me, he’s willing to wake up at 7, 8 in the morning to help me get strong and better, why would I get lazy and sleep?” Jabang said.“It’s like, ‘I’ll be there.’”

No more pain

Now, Jabang feels good.

He’s played in every regular season game for UNC (5-1-0, 1-0 ACC), nabbing his first collegiate points against Pitt during the ACC opener last Friday. Tonight he’ll take on Duke for the first time.

“I couldn’t be more pleased to see (him) on the field playing, much less playing well,” said Somoano.

Still, after four seasons without playing regularly, Somoano is trying to figure out what Jabang can do for the team.

“I don’t know what the expectations are,” he said. “We know he was an unbelievable talent in high school and that’s why we brought him here.”

For Jabang, it’s simple. He’s a forward, and forwards have to score goals. He keeps track of who’s scored how many, and when the last time he scored was.

“Every forward’s goal is to score goals, be a tough scorer, help your team,” Jabang said. “I’m the guy coming off the bench so I have to make some scoring goals too.”

Like his first season at UNC, Jabang is still competing with his teammates, trying to prove that he can make a difference on the field, trying to live up to the hype he came in with.

The only difference is now, he’s doing it pain-free.

sports@dailytarheel.com