From Kenya with love: Paul Magloire Ebanda

Eighteen months ago Kenyan hopeful Paul Magloire Ebanda was told he wouldn’t find a college in the States so just start looking for a job.

Ballers Heaven advertised that they were heading to Kenya to hold a camp in 2021, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ballers Heaven could not stick to the original dates.

In 2022, he was at his mum’s restaurant in Nairobi when someone asked the 6’7 Paul if he played basketball. He responded that he was hoping to attend an exposure camp in Kenya with a coach from the UK and an ESPN former scout.

The person in question was Coach Kent, a good friend of Coach Payne at Ballers Heaven. said he had a friend based in the UK and he would reach out to him the next day. They exchanged details and conversed the following day.

Over the next few weeks Coach Payne arranged for Paul’s parents to fly him out to the United Kingdom to live and train between 7am and 7pm, with the hopes of opening a door for him.

A prep school was looking for a power forward and in only 10 months Paul earned a college scholarship with Coach Jansen at Treasure Valley College in the North West of the United States.

It proves you just need to be in the right place at the right time and God will do the rest.

Paul said: “I’ll forever be grateful to Ballers Heaven. I came from Kenya to the UK looking for an opportunity to play basketball in the US and that opportunity wouldn’t be possible without Coach Roger and Ballers Heaven. The past year playing for Utah Peaks Prep has been an experience that I will never forget I just want to thank my teammates, and I want to thank Coach Darius I was able to learn a lot from him both on and off the court. I wanna thank Coach James for giving me an opportunity to go on and play college basketball. I thank my parents for all the sacrifices they made just for me to be here and I’m very excited for this next chapter in my life.”