When did you start playing soccer?
At 5 or 6. My uncle played for the Ghanaian national team. He was a professional soccer player for a long time. [Because of that] growing up you had to play soccer [in my family]. I played for a couple of years for a local team. My uncle didn't know how good I was. He heard. People told him, ‘Yo, Perry is very good. You should help him out, take him to tryouts.’ … After a couple years of not seeing me play, he took me to a soccer academy in Ghana to try out. He saw me play for the first time and he was amazed. … I stayed at an academy in Ghana. It's called Right to Dream. It's a nonprofit organization. And it recruits all over West Africa. I was like 12 or 13. I got a five-year scholarship…and then got a scholarship to come to the [United] States to boarding school.
What prompted you to come to the United States?
I could have stayed in Ghana and tried to go pro. After I graduated from the academy in Ghana, the path was, do I want to continue to play soccer or do I want to go to America where I could have both—have a really good education at a boarding school and also pursue soccer. It was a very hard conversation to have. The only person who was like, ‘Think about your education,’ was my grandma. She raised me. And she was like, 'Look, you gotta think about something that you can do long term and be realistic.' Coming to America was going to open so many other doors for me than just playing professional soccer. I was 17-18.
You also played for a team in Denmark?
I played for a team called FC Nordsjaelland, and they are in the Danish Super League Division One. I played for the academy [in Ghana], Right to Dream, because they’re affiliated with [leagues throughout Europe]. … So growing up, I had all those experiences, playing all over Europe.
And you play in the USL League Two now too?
Yeah, that's Lehigh Valley United. When I was in high school, I played for FC Blackrock. They have youth teams all the way up to the USL Two Team. The summer before I came to Lehigh, I played for Blackrock for their USL Two team in Vermont. But after I moved here, it's a little easier to play for Lehigh Valley United.
What's that schedule like? Do you play over the summer?
It's only over the summer. It's nice. A bunch of kids from Lehigh play on there as well.
What made you decide to come to Lehigh?
Because the rest of my family is back in Ghana, I needed a host family when I moved here. My host dad actually went to Lehigh. Doing my college search junior year of high school, I had all these schools I was talking to and Lehigh was one of them. I didn't really know a lot about Lehigh at that time. My host dad was like, ‘Oh, do you want to go play pickup soccer?’ He didn't tell me it was a Lehigh ID camp. So we came here. …
I spoke to [Lehigh Head] Coach [Dean] Koski, and he's like, ‘We really like you as a player, would you want to come here for college? We want to make you an offer on the spot.’ I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ I asked my host dad why he didn't tell me this was an ID camp. And he's like, ‘I just wanted you to feel free and just have fun. I know you play well when you have fun.’ He just wanted to try to take that pressure off of me.
I started looking at Lehigh. Another player from Ghana played here, Michael Tahiru.
He was the first Ghanaian player at Lehigh.
I reached out to him and asked him, what's Lehigh like? How's the team? How am I going to do here? Should I look at this place as a possible option? And he told me I should. He was having a great time here. … [What sealed] the deal for me was having that conversation with Michael and Coach Koski. When you talk to a coach and they make you feel like you can bring a lot to the team—and I wanted to be an impactful player, I wanted to go to a place where I felt cherished and loved. I felt Lehigh was a place to be able to do that and have the best balance of all the things I spoke about with the community, dedication to soccer and being part of a family. I think that's what Lehigh represents.
