American Samoa Players A Long Way From Home

Oregon State freshmen Rommel Mageo, left, and Noke Tago are attending school 5,000 miles from their home in Pago Pago, American Samoa. (Andy Cripe | Corvallis Gazette-Times)

Noke Tago’s first airplane ride was a long one.

A flight between American Samoa and the United States is roughly 15 hours.

If you’re lucky.

Tago said he flew eight hours to Hawaii, waited there for another eight hours and then made the five-hour trip to Oregon.

Tago and Oregon State teammate Rommel Mageo, also from Pago Pago, American Samoa, are both in Corvallis practicing with the Beavers’ football team.

It’s their first time away from home. And home is 5,000 miles away.

“Living a different life, it’s good for me because this is my first time I leave my parents and I stay away from my family,” Tago said. “So the first week I was homesick a lot and I missed my family.”

Mageo’s brother, Natanu, played for North Carolina State two years ago and had the benefit of talking to him before making the move.

“My brother played at N.C. State, so it was a big thing for me,” Mageo said. “He helped me out with a lot of things and he told me all about camp and everything.”

Moving halfway across the world is a big decision.

For Tago and Mageo, it’s a change that they were willing to make.

Few in American Samoa get a chance at college. Or more.

Career prospects are slim at home.

Football is their opportunity.

The American Samoa game

Football was introduced to American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the U.S., in the 1960s.

While rugby is huge throughout Polynesia, including neighboring Independent State of Samoa, football stuck in American Samoa with the help of television.

The physical nature of the game turned out to be a natural attraction.

“In American Samoa, American football is big,” OSU defensive line coach Joe Seumalo said. “That’s their only form of entertainment.

“They’re raw at the game but they understand the physicalness of it and they love it. They’re no different than a lot of kids over here in the U.S.”

Until Pop Warner started up recently, most of the organized football was played at the high school level.

That means that most players from American Samoa who were good enough to come to the U.S. and play have been raw.

Mageo, a linebacker for OSU, has been playing the sport for five years.

He started in eighth grade.

“It wasn’t really around because we didn’t have youth football. It was only high school, so when you’re little, all you look up to is high school football,” Mageo said. “So when I was in eighth grade I really wanted to play football so I tried out.”

Tago played rugby when he was younger.

A defensive tackle for the Beavers, he’s now 6-foot-1, 290-pounds.

When he arrived in high school the football coaches took one look at him and convinced him to play.

“My freshman year I didn’t practice the whole summer,” he said. “I just come to school and register and the coaches wanted me because they saw me and I’m big. They wanted me to play for them.

“I had more confidence in myself because I played rugby.”

Seumalo said the rules governing football in American Samoa are limited, so the players are able to practice and play year-round.

The players are different as well.

Size is not lacking among the young men of American Samoa.

It’s easy to find linemen and linebackers.

“Football there is different from here,” Mageo said. “There it’s mostly about strength. It’s not really about speed, but everybody’s strong out there.”

The players condition constantly but weight training isn’t common.

Tago said he did a lot of work cutting trees and grass and did push-ups every night before bed.

“We have to do our chores. Every day we do our plantation, grow taro,” Tago said. “That’s where we get our muscle built.”

The recruiting game

Attracted by the size and potential, college coaches have looked for Samoan players for some time now.

Many players of Samoan descent, such as Troy Polamalu, Marques Tuiasosopo and the late Junior Seau, have made the climb to the NFL.

The University of Hawaii has been stocking its roster with Samoan players for years.

Access to the athletes who were already living in Hawaii or on the mainland was simple. Getting to those in American Samoa is a different story.

Film has often been used to evaluate the players.

Recruiting trips to American Samoa have always been tough for college coaches.

“Everyone knows about American Samoa, it’s just that you have flights that are limited, so if you go there, expect to stay there for a couple days because the next flight is three or four days later,” Seumalo said. “And in Samoa, you could probably do it one day, you could do all your reruiting in one day there. But with NCAA rules, these are the dates you can go out and if you go there, you kind of lose a couple days by being out there.

“We just have to be smart in how we do it.”

While there is a good group of American Samoan players who made the trip to the U.S. to play football this fall as freshmen, most of them went to junior colleges.

Four received full-ride scholarships from Division I teams.

Tago and Mageo were two. The other two are Robert Barber and Destiny Vaeao of Washington State.

“Coming here, it’s a big deal, so it was a big thing on the island,” Mageo said. “It was all over the newspaper and everywhere.”

OSU can provide the education and the base for a future career.

“It’s a way for us to get in and get some of those kids and develop those kids,” Seumalo said. “Because you can count the amount the kids that have grown up in the islands, whether it be Samoa or Tonga, that have made it here and played the game of football.”

Full Article

Fa’a Samoa-The Mageo Way

In September on CBS's 60 Minutes, correspondent Scott Pelley presented a report, American Samoa: Football Island.  Pelley reported that 30 NFL players and over 200 Division-I players are of Samoan descent. N.C. State senior starting defensive tackle Natanu Mageo is one of those players. 

Raised in Pago-Pago, Mageo started playing football in high school.  There were no youth football programs in Samoa until this past year.  Mageo like other boys grew up playing rugby but could not wait to play football. 

"I always loved football and couldn't wait to get to put on the pads," Mageo said.  "Its part of our culture, everybody wants to play football back home."

In Pelley's 60 Minutes report, he travels to American Samoa and visits with the football teams. On his visit he notices big differences in the conditions in which they played and practiced that spoke to a toughness and passion for the game.  Teams did not have nice fields but dirt and rocks, teams did not all have pads and had to share the old beaten up ones that they did have.  

"We had to share our pads and helmets with the JV team," Mageo said. "For the practices Varsity would get the pads on Mondays and Tuesdays and JV would get the pads on Wednesdays.  They played their games of Thursday and Fridays and we played on Saturdays."

Like many impoverished societies, there are few ways to be successful in American Samoa.  It was planned throughout grade school to either try to go to the states to go to college, or to join the military.  Football became another part of the plan in recent years. 

"You look forward to it, you were expecting to leave the island. Most people go to college or join the military," Mageo said.  "Plan B for me was to go to college and play football. To go to the military was supposed to be Plan A but Plan B presented itself, so I took it."

At the time the only film of games were at the Samoan All-Star game and the Samoa Bowl, played against Hawaii.  With the game footage from these games, Mageo was recruited and given a partial scholarship to play for New Mexico Military Junior College.  After two seasons playing there, Mageo began getting recruited by Division-I schools all over the nation.

Recruiting Coordinator and Special teams coach Jerry Petercuskie travelled to Roswell, N.M. to visit with Mageo.  

"We were looking for an older defensive tackle so I started looking at junior colleges and decided to go check him out," Petercuskie said.  "We aren't going to bring in a player without finding out if they can play, if they are smart, if they are hard working and if they are a good person, Natanu was that and more."

Mageo has had to face many differences in his life here outside of football, experiencing a kind of culture shock being 6,900 miles from home.  

"In our culture, everyone is real respectful to others, it's a whole different world," said Mageo.  "Back home you can rely on each other and be more open with people but over here you have to rely more on yourself and that's how you survive."  

Mageo also had never spoken fluent English.  Growing up he learned English in class but spoke Samoan outside of it and in New Mexico there were other Samoans who he could communicate with.  At State he has had to adjust to a lack of that communication.  

"Its difficult because I think Samoan.  When someone speaks to me it gets translated into Samoan in my head and I have to think before I reply in Samoan," Mageo said.  "I adjusted by not being able to speak Samoan to anybody." 

The only time Mageo speaks Samoan now is once a week during his calls home.  Mageo's last time home was during the break between the holiday break last year.  Visiting right after the largest earthquake of the year hit and caused a tsunami that devastated American Samoa, just two months before. 

"It was right after practice and I had a lot of text messages telling me to call home and asking how my family was doing.   So I ran to the training room and had them turn to the news," Mageo said. "I had never been worried in my life before then.  I thought it was the safest place ever but when I talked to my cousins they said that's where the tsunami hit the worst, in my hometown.

"The next day I got a call from my auntie and she said my family was ok but at the same time a lot of people still died.  It was a hard time and when those kinds of things happen, the only thing you wish for is to be with your family. All I could do was hope and pray for the best."

A major focus in the Pelley piece is in regard to the tough nature and strong culture of the Samoan people.  In his report he interviews Troy Polamalu, perennial Pro-Bowler and Super Bowl winning safety for the Pittsburg Steelers, who is of Samoan descent.  Polamalu spoke of Fa'a Samoa, translated "The Samoan Way."

"It is Samoan culture, Samoan tradition," said Mageo.  "The Samoan mentality is that you are supposed to be tough."  It's not only people's expectations but it's my mentality when I play because that's how I was brought up." 

A criminology major due to graduate this May, Mageo carries Fa'a Samoa with him off the field as well, hoping his education here at State will not only provide him with a chance to play football, but also give him a valuable education that hopefully leads him to a job.  

"I'm trying to get my degree and do something with it," Mageo said.  

Full Article

Any Samoans In The House?

If so, please make Natanu Mageo your Facebook friend.

Mageo is on N.C. State's football team. It is particularly rare to have a Samoan football player on the East Coast. Most of 'em, and there's a bunch, play for West Coast schools. Hailing from Pago Pago in American Samoa (hope you caught the 60 Minutes piece on Samoan players defying the odds and making it to the NFL), Mageo was told by his father that maybe he should pick a West Coast school when he was ready to transfer from a New Mexico junior college.

But Natanu chose N.C. State.

"The biggest adjustment, I think, is talking so much English," Mageo said. "I never spoke English so much until I got here to Raleigh."

The Wolfpack player said he searches relentlessly for Samoans in the Raleigh area in order to talk about home but hasn't found a single one.

"I haven't seen one Samoan in Raleigh," Natanu  said. "I even tried to look them up on Facebook."

Any Samoans out there?

Full Article