Mississippi State soccer coach Nick Zimmerman received two gifts after his first win as head coach in August. Athletic director Zac Selmon gifted him a commemorative ball to mark the occasion, congratulating him on his first win at the helm after ascending from assistant coach.

Zimmerman also received a Kenya national team shirt from MSU fan Corban Makaya, who has been a regular at games since moving to West Point from the East African country in 2022.

“This year was the first time I got to go home since I’ve moved here, and in the process of buying gifts, I thought I’d love to give him a Kenya jersey,” Makaya said. “The first game got cancelled, and I was just carrying it around, but I got it to him.”

Makaya has no ties to MSU apart from being a soccer fan, something that he has found as a way to make living in the U.S. feel a little more like home.

Bringing the noise

Growing up in Kenya, Corban found a love for soccer and has played and followed the game since he was in grade school. He supports English Premier League club Liverpool and searched for a local team when he moved to the U.S. with his wife, Amy.

The couple met in 2018 while Amy was working abroad at a ministry in Kenya. In 2022, they married, and Corban moved to the U.S. with her that August, settling in West Point. It was important for Amy to help him feel more at home, and as it happened MSU soccer was about to start a new season.

“I don’t understand American sports very well, but I found out that the girls had a team,” Corban said. “We started coming in 2022, and there were maybe 50 to 100 people, but it was so much fun. We kept going, and we’ve been sitting in the same spot since the second game. I just started doing the chants, and I got a vuvuzela from back home.”

A vuvuzela is a long plastic horn that produces a loud monotone note.

“When he came to his first game, he’d only been in the U.S. for a couple of weeks,” Amy said. “It was important to me to cultivate a little bit of home and do things that were important to him. It was an atmosphere that was familiar to him, and even though it was a bit quiet, he knew how to make it his own. We ordered his vuvuzela pretty soon after that.”

In Africa, and throughout the rest of the world, the crowd plays a part in the match. Songs, drums, instruments, anything to keep the supporters involved from start to finish and get behind the team.

Corban noticed that wasn’t the case at MSU games, though. It was quiet, unless there was a goal or the Bulldogs won a free kick, and he saw an opportunity to make the experience more like home with the traditional gameday horn.

“In African music, it’s horns and drums, and the vuvuzela is huge in football and rugby,” Corban said. “That’s what you always see there. You basically want to make noise for 90 minutes.”

The couple rarely misses a game. The Makayas make as many as possible, even cutting weekend trips short or following the team to away games on occasion.

Growing with the program

MSU’s soccer program has grown considerably since 2018, both in gameday experience and on field performance.

The Bulldogs have made the NCAA Tournament for three consecutive years, a streak that began in 2022. In 2024, the team went unbeaten in conference play to win the program’s first-ever SEC regular-season championship.

Throughout the program’s rise, Corban found a new community attending the games. He and Amy brought their friends and family, and he made new friends with the other regulars. Amy ordered some extra vuvuzelas for their friends, and they began noticing students bringing their own into the West End of the field.

Now, Corban regularly plays a call and answer on his vuvuzela with those around the ground who have brought their own horns.

While it’s made parking and claiming a spot in the stadium a bit harder, Corban loves the increased patronage. It’s become a crowd worthy of the team’s quality, and the team has remained as interactive with the fans as they were when it was just 50 people.

“What I like is that even though it has grown, you still have that feeling of (knowing) the team,” Corban said. “Every game, win or lose, they’ll come by and they’ll say thank you to everybody, and they don’t have to. You felt that when it was 50 people, and the feeling is still there with 1,500 people. It still feels like a close relationship, both ways, between them and the fans.”

Corban didn’t go unnoticed. The players began to recognize him and greet him at every match, and the coaches have come to recognize him as well. He began going by “African Dawg” both in person and on social media, and now players, coaches, and even strangers recognize him by the name.

It took some getting used to, but he sees it as a sign of the team’s progress as much as his own.

“It’s still weird to me,” he said of the recognition, “but I see that as a win for the girls because it means somebody who maybe didn’t go or pay attention before has been to a game now, or at least followed them on TV or online. This is a team that won the SEC last season, and they continue to improve, even with all of the changes. People are noticing them.”