Five thousand miles from the Ghanaian district of Bolgatanga, two American service academies renewed their famous athletic rivalry on an indoor track in Annapolis. If a younger Amanda Agana had witnessed a few minutes of this event, she might have asked, “Wait, people run in circles for fun?”

But in 2016, Agana was a Navy plebe competing head-to-head against Army West Point for the first time. She took third place in the 400-meter dash and won the 800-meter run, the latter with a time of 2 minutes, 17:59 seconds. No sweat.

Army led the meet by just two points with three events to go, including the 4x400-meter relay. Agana was already Navy’s relay anchor as a freshman. The teams were neck-and-neck at the final handoff, but Agana fell behind on the last lap and lost to her cadet counterpart by just 0.76 of a second. Army held on to win the star meet, 91-90.

A tearful Agana was told by teammates and her coach it was OK. She tried her best.

“But in my mind, I didn’t try my best. I didn’t run as well and as smartly as I could have,” Agana recalled. “After that loss I realized that I had to shift my focus, that it wasn’t about being Amanda Agana. It was about being a Naval Academy Midshipman. It was about being part of the four-by-four team.”

She didn’t have to wait long for her opportunity for redemption — although that was hardly the most adversity she’d been through in her life.

Born in Ghana, raised for a few years by an aunt who treated her like a servant and brought to Arkansas before knowing more than a few words of English, Agana is singular even among her peers in her against-the-odds journey to Annapolis.

Her talent for running only aids the telling of her story. What matters to her more is helping others the way she’s been helped.

“I do not regret my decision” to attend Navy, Agana said. “I believe that this is the best way for me to re-pay this country for what it has done for me.”

From Africa to Arkansas

As the head of the household in the village of Zaare in Bolgatanga, Ghana, John Agana had to care for 12 children, both his own and his nephews and nieces. Amanda was the youngest of John’s four biological children and the only girl. Her mother died when she was young, and soon her father felt it was best to send Amanda to live with her aunt.

Agana remembers the first month living with her aunt in another village as “really nice.”

“I got to talk to my aunt, live with her family and help her with housework,” Agana said. “But as time went on, I became more of a servant to the family than an actual member of the family.”

Agana’s aunt required her to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to begin her work. As early as age 9, she swept the compound multiple times a day, cooked the family’s meals and tended to the aunt’s shop.

It was not the labor that hurt Agana most.

“For me, what was most disheartening was that I didn’t get to eat with the family,” Agana said. “It was only after they had eaten and I had finished cleaning that I could eat what I had spent hours cooking.”

This was Agana’s life for three years of her childhood, until her father paid a surprise visit. John Agana sells hand-crafted baskets around the world to benefit his village, and a nurse practitioner and instructor at the University of Arkansas named Carol Meadows came across his enterprise and decided to buy some. A long email conversation began, and they met up the next time John came to the U.S.

“I was sweeping the compound and my dad and my [adoptive] mom drove up. And my first impression was, ‘Why is my father with this white woman?’ Keep in mind there are no white people in Ghana that much, so I was very surprised,” she remembered.

It was then that Agana learned her father had married that white woman, and that they wanted to bring her and her younger cousin Gifty to live with them in the U.S. Carol Agana brought new clothes for them. But Amanda was wary at first. Would Carol want to use her the same way her aunt did?

Carol decided to live with the family in Ghana for two months as the children adjusted.

In Arkansas, where Carol Agana has called home most of her life, Amanda knew almost no English and had to learn quickly. To make friends, Carol suggested Amanda join the school track team when she reached seventh grade.

‘I am running for the U.S.’

With stamina to match her speed, she starred at Fayetteville High, running the 800 meters and the mile. Her teams won state titles in outdoor track in 2011, indoor track in 2012 and cross country in 2013. Along the way, Agana ran sub-2:10 in the 800 for the first time, and her coaches felt she was on course to meet the qualifying standard for the 2016 Summer Olympics, where she could qualify for Ghana.

She did this all in the proverbial backyard of the University of Arkansas, a track and field powerhouse.

When college recruitment letters inevitably started to pour in, Agana’s high school coach organized them in three piles. One for top programs such as Arkansas. One for academic elites with good programs to match, such as Cornell. And one pile that amounted to “the rest.”

The Naval Academy was in the last pile, and Agana claimed her high school coach “withheld” Navy coach Carla Criste’s letter for four months. When she got her hands on it, Agana showed it to her mother.

“First, she said, ‘You’re honored to have this recruitment letter,’?” Agana recalled. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘Just them showing interest in you speaks volumes about what you have accomplished and the type of person that you are and can become.’?”

She realized she wanted to help people. That meant helping young girls in Ghana escape the kind of life Carol helped her escape. It also meant giving back to the United States, the country “that gave me so much, that gave me [Carol].”

Agana got on the phone with Criste, who’s done plenty of recruiting in her 27 years as Navy’s head coach. Both Agana and her mother were enthusiastic, Criste said.

Soon Agana was accepted into the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Rhode Island and spent a year there before coming to Annapolis. Running for Navy meant surrendering her eligibility to run for Ghana in the Olympics, but Agana still could try to qualify for Team USA, something her Arkansas track friends still ask about when she visits home.

“When I go home and they ask me, ‘Oh, do you regret your choice? Do you still want to run for the U.S.?’ — since I can’t run for Ghana anymore,” she said. “My answer to that was, ‘I am running for the U.S., just in a different way. I am representing the United States at a much higher and more purposeful level, in my opinion.’?”

Redemption and a future

Criste’s team is strong in the middle distances, so she’s had Agana change disciplines and focus on sprints for the sake of the team. Agana is very unselfish, Criste said, and was happy to comply.

Now Agana’s 500-meter personal record of 1:13.56 is the third-best time in program history. She has a top time of 56.04 in the 400, but Criste said she is “poised” to run sub-55 this year. She’s run the 60 in 7.80 seconds. But she still gets to contribute in longer distances: She anchored both a 4x400 and a 4x800 team that set Navy records at the 2017 Patriot League championships.

None of that may have been possible if Agana didn’t bounce back from the disappointing indoor loss to Army her freshman year. That April, West Point hosted the rivals’ outdoor star meet. Once again, it was close. The meet came down to the final event — the 4x400.

Navy’s team, anchored by Agana and also featuring Lily Brose, Brittany Burg and Hali McFadgen, set a meet record with a time of 3:49.68. Agana’s work on the final stretch kept the Mids a nose ahead of Army, which clocked in at 3:49.72. Navy won the meet, 103-100.

Agana already has developed a plan to help her native Ghana after finishing her Naval service.

“I want to build a high school in Ghana that can teach girls that they are more than just their bodies,” she said. “Every time I go home I see more and more of my friends, who were the smartest people I knew, but they don’t have the money or the resources and their parents choose the guys over them because ‘men are the future,’ right?”

The school would give Ghanaian girls better circumstances to apply to and attend a U.S. college, “and in turn, they have to go back to Ghana and develop it as a nation,” Agana said.

azielonka@baltsun.com

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