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An unlikely champion: 7-year-old Ethiopian orphan, Matiwos Rumley OUTSIDE THE LINES M Lost & Found SEVEN-YEAR-OLD ADDIS ABABA ORPHAN MATIWOS RUMLEY FINDS A NEW HOME AND KICKS INTO HIGH GEAR BY Rick Chandler // PHOTOGRAPH BY Sasha Nialla MATIWOS RUMLEY'S AMAZING JOURNEY cannot be measured in miles alone. A year and a half ago, the seven-year-old was living in an orphanage in Addis Ababa, one of the ever-increasing numbers of children in sub-Saharan Africa left without parents due to poverty, disease, or warfare. But that's where Mark and Jodi Rumley come in: they're the Connecticut couple who adopted Matiwos last year and brought him to the United States. To say the child has taken to his new life would be an understatement. By January Matiwos found himself being cheered by more than 68,000 fans at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where he was an honorary captain for the coin fip prior to the AFC Championship game. Hobnobbing with NFL players had become old hat for him by then: Matiwos had been honored a week earlier at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta prior to a Falcons game. Why all the hoopla? Despite never having picked up a football until November of last year, Matiwos churned through local, state, and regional competitions to win the national NFL Punt, Pass & Kick competition for his age group. He received his trophy during an Atlanta Falcons playoff game, and then was invited to attend the AFC Championship game by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. But now the cheering has subsided, and it's on to the really serious part of being a kid: book bags, school lunches, and playing with his brother and sisters in the backyard. "It's been an incredible ride, but now it's back to business as usual," said Mark Rumley from the family's home in Hebron, Connecticut. "The Patriots were incredible to us, and Robert Kraft could not have been nicer. Matiwos is pretty much a celebrity at school. But now it's back to the everyday things of being a family." M ATI WO S RU M L E Y ETHIOPIA P U N T, PA S S A N D K I C K Matiwos has also been playing basketball, soccer, and football since he's come to live with the Rumleys, and in the spring will begin Little League baseball. "At the orphanage, Matiwos's description was ' Lives to play, not to sit.' And that's him," Mark Rumley said. "Right now he really wants to try ice hockey." And that's a big step in itself. It was soon after Matiwos came to live with the Rumleys that someone handed him a bottle of spring water from a cooler, and the boy couldn't hold it: He dropped it two or three times. The reason was that until that moment he had never held touched anything cold. Matiwos's biggest love besides sports? "I hate to say it, but it's video games," Mark Rumley said. He especially loves MLB Baseball 2K and Madden NFL. "Often his frst question as soon as he gets home from school is 'Can I go downstairs and play video games?'" Yep. There's an American kid, all right. FINALIST AG E G R O U P 7 AND UP T H E N AT I O N A L N F L P U N T, PA S S & K I C K C O M P E T I T I O N I S T H E O L D E S T G R A S S R O O T S I N I T I AT I V E O F THE NFL AND JUST COMPLETED ITS 5 1 S T Y E A R O F I N T R O D U C I N G Y O U N G P L AY E R S TOTHE SPORT OF FOOTBALL. F O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N V I S I T N F L P P K . C O M . "At the orphanage, Matiwos's description was 'Lives to play, not to sit.' And that's him." - MARK RUMLEY 18 Tempus-Magazine.com . Summer 2013