Ben Polk didn’t have much to hold onto growing up on an American compound in Saudi Arabia. He had a dirt field.

It was configured in the shape of a diamond and was the sanctuary that fostered Polk’s first love: kickball.

With each booming kick sent toward the towering walls of the compound, he gradually discovered his knack for kicking.

Outside the walls was an unstable Middle Eastern nation. But inside, Polk learned English, attended school and lived as normal as the situation would allow with his father working as a fighter jet engineer.

His American lifestyle displaced 7,000 miles was approaching normality, but his mother’s desire to leave the compound led her to leave her husband and move with her son to England.

Courtesy of Ben Polk

 

“I have been everywhere,” Polk said, reflecting on a 22-year journey that’s brought him near death by Saudi Arabian gunmen, to the negotiating table as a 12-year-old vying for a soccer contract in Oxford, England, to now settling in Syracuse — his third collegiate soccer team.

Polk’s childhood was punctuated by uprooting moments. He’s been molded by living in three different countries and indented by a toxic home life — he rarely speaks with his father and hasn’t seen his mother since he was 16. He took shelter on the soccer field, the only line of consistency in Polk’s seismographic-looking life.

Things have straightened out of late for Polk — a junior forward with five goals in his last five games after not scoring in the first seven. He rides waves of confidence as long as he can. He has an intuition they can crash prematurely, having endured anxious periods wondering if his mom was too hungover to drive to soccer practice or if the NCAA would grant his eligibility to play at Syracuse.

“Look Ben,” Polk recalls SU head coach Ian McIntyre telling him, “worry about the controllables. Don’t worry about what you can’t control.”

As a child, ignorance was his best companion when his mother shouted to stay inside as gunmen infiltrated the sole entrance of the compound — armed by two guards without ammunition.

Polk was fine. He didn’t know any better.

He didn’t mind the “shady characters” his mother had in their Oxford home after they left his father in Saudi Arabia. Polk wasn’t fazed walking in on his mom passed out drunk on the couch.

“Time to watch TV,” he’d think to himself.

If there was one thing he could control, it was the secrecy of the life he lived inside his home. No one knew anything. He turned away school counselors and friends concerned with his quiet spells.

He preferred to bury a gradually fracturing home life, even in his own mind.

“At the time, I didn’t really know too much,” Polk said. “I was just ignorant, fortunately.”

But ignorance dissolved like any imaginary friend. Polk knew he was a gifted soccer player. The budding, 10-year-old center midfielder began a six-week tryout to join Oxford United — a professional soccer academy. It took just two days of tryouts before he was offered a two-year contract.

Chase Guttman | Asst. Photo Editor

 

With the contract came rigorous expectations and methods of accountability. He stood nervously on the sidelines before each of his Sunday morning games, knowing a series of slipups could haunt him come the re-signing period.

Polk’s coach pulled him and his mother into a room at the conclusion of his contract. In front of Polk was a sheet with attributes like “short passing” and “dribbling” listed next to grades A, B, C, D and F. He aced passing attributes but was docked on “decision making,” a quality he still wonders how it was measured.

In an incomprehensible situation for a 12-year-old, his soccer fate with Oxford United was decided in front of his eyes: four more years.

“It was a big deal,” Polk said. “I still get nervous now.”

His long-term contract was curtailed after two years by his mother’s drinking. She lost her driver’s license and couldn’t get her son to events.

Polk was taken in by the Frenzel family down the street after the mother, Anna, walked in on Polk’s mother drunkenly passed out multiple times with him sitting by the TV, having not eaten dinner.

“I’d had enough,” Polk said. “It was like, how could you not give it up for me?

“It’s so long ago now, there’s no anger. There’s nothing there.”

Sandwiched between a fabricated American lifestyle and stressful, professional-style youth soccer are aspects of his childhood he stills holds onto. Polk positively spins his lifetime of travels by remembering he can count to 10 in four languages.

He’s found an appreciation in “little things,” he said, such as the genuine nature of those in his inner-circle after an upbringing that didn’t lend itself to sincerity.

Jon Mettus | Asst. Web Editor

 

Polk leaned back on a newly curated support system to get through an imperfect start to his SU career. He missed the Orange’s first two games before the NCAA granted him eligibility following his transfer from Herkimer County Community College, and then sulked in a five-game goal-scoring drought.

He spoke with Pepe Aragon, his former coach at Herkimer, before SU’s game against Pittsburgh on Sept. 25.

Aragon told him to stop worrying about when the goal would come —a familiar message from his current coach — and start having fun, like he did scoring 33 goals for Herkimer last year.

Polk made good on Aragon’s word, netting three goals against the Panthers.

Polk finds solace in the trials of his time growing up. He maintains his upbringing matured him quicker than others, not finding laughter in the same things as his fellow 10-year-old teammates.

He never took a single item or memento with him from the 10-plus countries he’s traveled. A physical remembrance could only impede him from going forward.

The imprints and scars from his journey are only between his ears, where the heaviest lifting of Polk’s life has taken place.

“I would hope to say ‘struggled to success,’” Polk said, trying to encapsulate his life in a sentence. “Done the struggle part, still kind of struggling. Hopefully the end of the tunnel will be bright.”

Published on October 12, 2015 at 11:18 pm

Contact Connor: cgrossma@syr.edu | @connorgrossman