Obsaa Feda is running.
 
The eight-year-old orphan in the Oromiyaa region of Africa has just delivered the cows he is responsible for to a farm three miles away so they can be fed, and it's time to race back home and begin his schoolwork for the day.
 
There might be some adventures between here and there. After all, young Obsaa is known for occasionally getting distracted between point A and point B. And on any given morning, it's impossible to predict when there will be some sugarcane to pick and sample, some friends to stop and play soccer with, or an encounter with a snake big enough to eat a young boy.
 
Wait, what?
 
"I was just daydreaming, not thinking anything, with the cows in front of me," Feda, now a senior at Miami University, recalled. "I hear a noise come behind me and the grass started shaking. I looked down, and it was a really huge snake just passing by me. I was frightened to death. I couldn't move; I was just in shock. Then the snake kept going away.
 
"I was lucky: I got the cows out of there and then tried not to come back to that place!"
 
Snakes? Hippos? Alligators? Just another day in Africa.
 
- - -
 
Feda lost both of his parents at a young age, and lived with other relatives for several years near the city of Shakiso before coming to the United States around the age of 11. "My uncle was doing a process to get us to come to this country," he said. That brought Feda and about 10 of his relatives to their new hometown of Silver Spring, Md. He hasn't been back to Africa since.
 
Feda was ready to begin the next chapter of his life…even though he had no idea what to expect.
 
"I wanted to come to America because it's just something that we heard so much about through movies and people talking, but they make it dramatic," said Feda. "It was completely different here than what I thought.

"They told me it was like everybody that lives in America gets a really big mansion. They don't have to live there for more than 10 years, and then they get another one…[I thought] people get money like it's nothing and everyone lives a lavish life."
 
Feda remembered being surprised when his family moved into a suburban home. "I was looking for those tall buildings they were telling me about," he laughed. "I was like, 'Are we in America? Or maybe this is just the bad part?'
 
"When I look back now, that was a beautiful part!"
 
The New York City skyline in view as his plane first landed on American soil was more along the lines of what Feda had expected to see from his new homeland. "I was looking around at the skyscrapers, like 'Maybe that's our house! No, maybe THAT's our house!'"
 
Part of adjusting to a new culture was obviously learning another language. Feda, who grew up speaking Affan Oromo and Amharic, didn't know any English at all when he immigrated to America. And he quickly discovered that the movies that had been his main exposure to U.S. culture weren't the easiest way to pick up a previously unfamiliar language, especially with no subtitles to assist.
 
"The Fast and Furious was one of those movies, but obviously it was in English. We just watched it for the action parts," Feda smiled. "We'd see the gunshots, and we'd get excited. We'd see the fight parts, and we'd get excited.
 
"We didn't know the story at all, but we'd just try to connect [the dots]."
 
Feda, now a Sport Leadership and Management major at Miami, started his American schooling as a fifth-grader. He remembers being picked on and getting in fights because of how poorly he spoke English back then. Away from school, Feda found some comfort and enjoyment in organized athletics, especially getting his first real experience with a soccer ball.
 
"I played soccer back home, but it wasn't with an actual ball," Feda said. "We'd get our parents' socks, then put either a sponge or newspaper in, and sew it to make it look like a ball…a lot of kids would try to steal it, because socks are not cheap!" A good 'sock-er' ball could last a week if treated well, but the Oromiyaan youngsters were always worried about making sure it didn't accidentally end up lost forever in the nearby off-limits Muslim burial area.
 
When Feda and his siblings and cousins first arrived in Maryland, his uncle bought a variety of sports equipment for the children to experiment with, including a basketball, soccer ball and football. With a collection of things laid out in front of him to choose from, Feda didn't have any frame of reference to know what he was looking at.
 
 "I had never seen those balls before," he said. "I saw the football, and thought, 'This is a weird-shaped soccer ball.' I threw it away: I didn't want to play with that!
 
"I got the basketball and started kicking it hard. It hurt my foot, but I was like, 'Whatever – at least I have my own soccer ball.' Guys were asking me, 'Why are you playing [soccer] with a basketball?' I said, 'I never heard what that was!''
 
Once Feda got a real soccer ball 'like the one I see on TV!', he took to the sport naturally, earning a spot on a traveling club team. Feda played soccer until his first year or two of high school, before he decided he was ready for a new challenge.
 
"That's why I joined running," he explained.
 
Feda excelled in cross country during his time competing for Northwood High School, especially his senior season. He captured a 4A individual state title in 2018 and received Gatorade Runner of the Year honors in Maryland, eventually committing to join the RedHawks the next summer. The program seemed to be a good fit, and Feda's first visit to Oxford helped convince him of that.  
 
"I never cared about how pretty a campus was until I came here and I was like, 'This is actually really nice,'" Feda said. "With all the trees, it gave me the same vibe as when I was back home. When I was in Oromoiyaa, everything's green there, and that reminded me of [Miami]."
 
- - -
 
Obsaa Feda is running.
 
It's Saturday, Oct. 29, 2022 and Feda is in the midst of the Mid-American Conference cross country championship meet in Athens, Ohio. He is chasing not one title, but two, as he begins the final stretch of the race. His RedHawks are attempting to win the team championship for the first time since 2018, and he is in position to possibly cross the finish line in first place to give Miami its first individual men's winner since 2005.
 
With seven straight top-three finishes at the MAC cross country meet as a team, the Miami men have enjoyed a good amount of success in head coach Tom Chorny's tenure. Still, the RedHawks entered the weekend only owning one league championship in the past two decades. Feda was certain his group could change that.
 
"I was confident in my teammates that we were capable of doing it," said Feda. "The coaches knew it. We all knew it. The other teams didn't know it!
 
"Everybody came in [to 2022] with confidence in themselves," he continued. "We all just worked as a collective and then kept on building. When it comes to championship season, nobody feels fatigued, nobody feels out of place, and nobody feels that they can't do this."
 
In the final thousand meters of the 8k race, Feda was near the front when he saw Eastern Michigan's Toby Gualter make a move to take over the lead and knew it was time to act. "He's really good – I can't let him get away," Feda thought. He passed Gualter and moved into first place, trying to find an extra gear to finish the last few hundred meters.
 
"I have never seen Obsaa out-kick anybody like that," said Chorny. "When they came around with five or six hundred meters to go and [Gualter] was right on his back, I thought, 'Oh man, he's going to have a hard time…somehow he held him off and ended up actually winning by two and a half seconds…
 
"I was very pleasantly surprised, but it just goes along with everything we've seen from him this year. He's consistent, he's racing at a very high level, and he's even increased his ability to 'throw down' with somebody in the finish line chute."
 
"I was shocked in the last kilometer," Feda said later. "I didn't know I had this kind of speed in my legs! I didn't feel too tired; I was just happy that I finally get to win a conference [meet]."
 
The only feeling Feda enjoyed more than crossing the finish line at the 23:39.7 mark ahead of 70 other competitors was seeing his teammates follow closely behind. Mhalicki Bronson and Jake Bertelsen turned in top-10 showings, with Max Polak taking 11th place and Patrick Wills finishing 16th. That gave the RedHawks the team championship they had been working towards all season.
 
Feda says the reason cross country first hooked him as a high schooler was the way it could be both an individual and team sport. "That's something that pulled me in," he said. "Cross country was the sport that really got me interested in running…if you're an individual guy, you don't have to rely on your teammate, but at the same time, if you're a team guy, you do.'"
 
Miami hopes to build on the confidence from its MAC championship this weekend as the RedHawks compete at the NCAA Division I Great Lakes Regional in Terre Haute, Ind. Feda and company are aiming for a top-four team finish Friday morning and will attempt to qualify for the national championship meet as a group for the first time since 2003.
 
"Our mantra this season has been, 'Don't do anything different,'" Chorny explained. "They've been so consistent…if they race the same exact way they raced all year, and we get five guys that show up on race day and race to the best of their ability, they don't even have to knock it out of the park.
 
"They just have to show up and race the way they've prepared, and I think we're going to have a great finish."
 
With Feda's confidence and consistency at all-time highs, he and the RedHawks are poised for a special weekend. "Based off our times, we have a pretty good chance of making it out," Feda said.
 
It would be the perfect storybook ending to Feda's senior cross country season.
 
And it would be just another unbelievable chapter in 'The Adventures of Obsaa Feda.'
 
Find more Front Row Features at MiamiRedHawks.com/FrontRowFeatures.
 
The Miami men's and women's cross country teams compete at the NCAA Division I Great Lakes Regional in Terre Haute Friday morning, Nov. 11 at LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course in Terre Haute, Ind. Follow the meet online here.