Nevada cross country head coach Kirk Elias knew there was a risk recruiting athletes from Africa given how far from Reno that journey is. But that risk has paid off with junior Daniel Sayo, a native of Kenya.
"It's always a gamble bringing in athletes from Kenya," Elias said. "I spent four years talking to this coach before we decided to finally pull the trigger on somebody."
In high school, running was more of a hobby for Sayo. He didn't really take it seriously until attending a Global Sports Camp when he realized it could not only provide an opportunity to compete in the United States but also a college scholarship. So Sayo packed up his bags, hopped on three flights and traveled 9,365 miles across the globe from Narok, Kenya to Northern Nevada after Elias offered that scholarship shortly after the Wolf Pack cross country team was reinstated in 2019.
"Everybody thinks of America as a great country," Sayo said. "That was my thought. I'm going to a great country, which is going to change my life. It was my first flight ever. It was kind of like a shock to me. I was scared. I didn't know where to go, and I didn't know how to use the screens to find your (airport) gate. Coach Elias picked me up at the airport and he was, like, 'Do you have a bag?' So we went to the luggage area. I picked one bag, and he was, like, 'That's it?'"
Moving to Northern Nevada in January 2020, the colder weather was a culture shock for Sayo, but Elias said his ability to adapt and mature over the years has been helpful in the adjustment.
"He's just good humored, loves to kid around, so it's really easy for him to break the ice with people," Elias said. "He did most of the work. We would try to make him comfortable. He was already doing that with the people around him. He came from a setting for instance where the clock didn't mean much. You could roll into practice whenever you wanted to, and that's not the way we work here."
For Sayo, it's been a good adjustment.
"I've seen a lot of things that I didn't get an opportunity to see in Kenya," he said. "I've seen how people view other stuff, like different points of view. How people think about some things. How we used to think about them."
Despite getting hurt shortly after moving to Nevada, Sayo said this season is the best he's felt so far while running on trails. Sayo won his first college race at the Nevada Twilight Classic in the 7K with a time of 23 minutes, 29 seconds and holds the fourth (24:27) and fifth (24:41) fastest times in the 8K in school history since the program was reinstated in 2019. He has the second-fastest time in the 10K (31:52) on Nevada's all-time list. The Mountain West championships are Friday in Laramie, Wyo., and Sayo has more goals he wants to reach.
"I said, 'You can you can be top 10 at conference. You can be top seven at conference. You could you could get a medal,'" Elias said. "And he goes, 'I want my children to know that I was really an athlete. I want to be able to show them the medal from the States.'"
Added Sayo: "It's my dream running for my country, so maybe someday I will. We have a lot of competitive athletes, but I'm going to go out there and compete with them and show them what I can do."
You can watch the story on Daniel Sayo from Wolf Pack All Access below.