Posted: Sunday, July 31, 2016 12:10 am | Updated: 12:34 am, Sun Jul 31, 2016.
NORTH ATTLEBORO - His first name means "One World," and the journey has been many a mile, spread over two continents for Andualem Chisholm.
From an orphanage in the bustling capital city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and its nearly four million residents, to the tree-laced suburban streets of North Attleboro.
Orphaned at an early age along with his sister Tizeta, "Andy" Chisholm arrived in America in 2006 and since then, it has been a decade of learning a new language, immersing himself into the culture of the United States and becoming one of the premier soccer players on the Eastern seaboard.
"I don't know how I learned English because my parents didn't want us to watch a lot of TV," said Chisholm. "I didn't think about the so many different options that I had."
Entering his junior year at the Wheeler School in Providence, Chisholm was honored as the Olympic Development Program's Player of the Year in Rhode Island and was one of 18 players from the U.S. Soccer Federation's Region 1 (the Eastern seaboard) selected to an elite under-17 team that participated in an international series in Borgano, Italy.
Chisholm and his sister, who is also a student-athlete at Wheeler and a former member of the Bayside FC girls' program, were welcomed into the arms of Alpin and Mary Chisholm, who had three children of their own a decade ago.
"Our older kids had all grown up and we had that 'empty nest syndrome,' " explained Al Chisholm, a computer software engineer whose wife, Mary, is a retired pathologist.
Their children have since moved on. Cora is a quality control supervisor; Amanda an elementary school teacher and Sarah has two children of her own. Several years ago, however, Cora had spent a year in China, became fluent in Mandarin and worked with underprivileged children. Meanwhile, friends of Al and Mary had adopted their own children.
So, through the Waltham-based Wide Horizons for Children program, the Chisholm family added two new members.
Because the Chisholms wanted to adopt younger children, they discovered that Ethiopia had more "flexible options" for adoption.
"Unlike children from other countries, in the grand scheme of things, Ethiopian orphans have not been neglected," said Al Chisholm.
The adoption procedure took two years to complete, which involved interviews, finger-printing, a lengthy investigative process, "mounds of paperwork" and a week-long trip to Ethiopia.
Finally, Andy and Tizi boarded a plane bound for Boston with their new parents .
The two new additions to the Chisholm household attended public schools in North Attleboro for a year, then transferred to the Wheeler School in Providence, a private institution.
Andy had been living with his parents in Addis Ababa before they passed away, while Tizi was raised by her grandmother a hundred miles away. Each spoke different dialects of the Ethiopian language.
"I don't remember much from being a kid in Ethiopia, but I do remember going with my dad to his soccer practices when I was three years old and kicking the ball around," said Andy.
"I mean, when I first came to America, I didn't like ice cream. Now, I can't get enough of it."
While Andualem is roughly translated into the Ethiopian dialect as 'One World,' Tizeta is a commonplace word in the culture for 'Rememberance.' Andy, now 17, and Tizi, 15, both had athletic genes from birth, with their father being a former soccer star who served as a coach.
"Andy had the reputation of being a great soccer player at the orphanage," said Al.
Within a year of moving to North Attleboro, Andy was playing soccer in the North Attleboro Youth Soccer and Explosion FC programs and began playing football in the Pop Warner Football program.
"I love football, I'm a big Patriots' fan," said Andy, who played every position on the football field back then, using his speed out of the wildcat formation. "That was a lot of fun, but my parents thought that I would get hurt and my soccer coaches at the time thought that I was so good at soccer that I ought to concentrate on that sport."
Shortly thereafter, Chisholm hung up his football shoes for soccer shoes and began playing soccer for the Rhode Island-based Bayside program.
Chisholm is already in the select pool of players for the USSF's Region 1 under-17 team that will travel to a tournament next spring in either Germany or Turkey.
Chisholm is also being considered for enrollment into the New England Revolution Academy for year-round development, already appearing on the radar of NCAA Division I soccer programs like Georgetown, Providence College and Yale.
Chisholm just returned from the USSF Region 1 tryout camp at Rider University in New Jersey, one of 300 players under consideration and one of less than two dozen selected to return for offseason training in Sarasota, Fla.
While the 5-foot-9 Chisholm has also tried basketball and lacrosse, soccer is his calling card. He just returned from a tournament in Maryland with Bayside, and has had other soccer visits to Florida and Washington, D.C.
While in Borgano, Italy -- a quaint town on the shores of the Adriatic Ocean, near Genoa and south of Milan -- Chisholm and the U.S. team were in a field with nine other European teams, training and scrimmaging with their peers, while also visiting the camp of Italian League champion Juventus.
"Those (Italian) kids had such great touches, they knew what they were doing," said Chisholm. "You think that you're one of the best, then you see kids like that training harder than me."
Chisholm was the leading scorer for the Wheeler School last fall, playing in a watered-down competitive division where the scores are often 7-0 and 20-0. He often sat on the sidelines for second halves of matches.
"It's 100 percent totally different than playing club soccer, our school is not very competitive," said Chisholm, who orchestrates as an attacking midfielder. "I mean, I dominate a lot of the matches."
That is why he is considering becoming a member of the Revolution Academy, following in the footsteps of such other local products as Kyle Freitas, Ben Woodruff, Ryan Kingsley and Dom Machado.
He has had his share of soccer injuries too, notably a hip flexor, but nothing seems to prevent Chisholm from writing his own story. Along the way, he has taken a much different path than had he remained in Ethiopia in an orphanage.
There was a restaurant on Thayer State in Providence, near the Wheeler and Brown University campus, that featured Ethiopian food. Chisholm could often be found there. Now, he can be found trying to find a parking space every morning before school.
"I loved soccer growing up as a kid, but I didn't put much work into it," said Andy. "Now I do, I even go to the Bayside under-15 team practices just to work out. I'm so much stronger mentally and physically. I'm in a different place as a person than where I used to be." Read more here
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