The last name may be familiar to basketball fans, but Moses Bol had a unique journey from Sudan to Milwaukee
You may know Bol as the relative of former NBA star Manute Bol, but his story goes far behind that.
Curt Hogg
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Outside UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena on a Thursday evening in February, a wet snow is falling. Inside, it's raining jumpers.
There's a palpable buzz throughout the stadium thanks to a revitalized program. And, on this night, the roughly 1,700 spectators who trekked through the sloppy roads and into downtown Milwaukee have been treated to a 21-9 start behind red-hot shooting from the host Panthers against Detroit Mercy.
The renewed energy around the Panthers is most palpable as guard Markeith Browning leads a scoring barrage and Ahmad Rand throws down an acrobatic reverse dunk during the early onslaught of offense. On the other end of the floor, many are paying close attention to Detroit guard Antoine Davis, who is chasing down the NCAA career scoring record.
But just over six minutes into the game, during a slight break in the action, none of that matters. The loudest cheer of the night comes as Milwaukee head coach Bart Lundy turns over his left shoulder and motions toward the bench.
Big Mo is checking into the game.
Here comes Moses Bol, all 7 foot 1 of him.
The center from South Sudan is the most recognizable face (and frame) on campus. He's become beloved by the fans, too.
Bol’s season numbers are modest – 3.1 points, 1.9 rebounds and 1.1 blocks in 9.6 minutes of action per game – but his impact on the program isn’t. From a village in Sudan to junior college in Kansas – where it took him months to realize that individual stats even existed in basketball – to graduating with a master’s degree from UWM’s public administration program, Bol's story is far from unostentatious, as well.
Bol grew up in a village in Sudan without any trace of basketball. Bol was born on July 4, 1998 to Bul and Awur Bol in the southern part of Sudan. As a member of the Dinka tribe, believed to be the tallest ethnic group in Africa, and whose grandfather was 7-foot-8, Bol was bound to be tall. But that doesn’t mean he was bound for basketball – even if it was in his bloodlines as a relative of former NBA star Manute Bol.
“I was a soccer player,” Moses Bol said. “I had nothing to do with basketball my whole life. I never watched basketball. Even today, you’ll never catch me watching NBA or anything. I was a soccer guy my whole life.”
In the village where Bol grew up, far away from any roads or cities or technology, basketball didn’t exist.
“It was very different,” Bol said. “Just a normal life. There were animals. We had cows, goats, things like that. We just took care of that. It’s not like we had TV or electricity or anything like that. For most of our life, it was animals and open space, going into the bushes and picking up food. It was good.”
For Bol, as well as everyone else in the village, daily life regimented around performing tasks, including cleaning around the home, milking cows, herding cattle and, as he got older, protecting the family’s animals from foxes, hyenas or other predators.
Bol and his family relied on their cattle and other animals to sustain life. Losses to hyenas or lions could be devastating.
“It was bad,” Bol said. “It’s very constant.”
Ongoing violence was prevalent in Sudan
Soccer was one game Bol and other children would play whenever there was down time. The other was a byproduct of their surroundings.
“Any game we would play, it was everything about soldiers, about the fighting, war,” Bol said. “What we saw in our everyday life was commanders walking around with soldiers walking around behind them. It was cool to us at the time because that’s all we knew.”
Bol’s father was part of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the military arm of the rebel movement against the Sudanese government that formed in 1983 and engaged in a 22-year civil war. As a very young child, Bol’s dream was even to become a commander in the army.
An estimated 2 million people died as a result of the war and 4 million more were displaced before the Republic of South Sudan eventually became recognized as an independent state in 2011.
“It’s a lot,” Bol said of the war. “You can ask anybody from Sudan. It affects everybody, but you just accept it; that’s where you’re from. But it’s a lot.”
Following South Sudan’s independence, “excitement and energy were unparalleled," according to Human Rights Watch.
It didn’t last. What began as a political dispute within the new ruling party became another civil war that broke out in 2013. An estimated 400,000 people, including many civilians, were estimated to have died in the first five years of the war. Millions more were displaced, dire food shortages were caused and the social fabric of the country was torn as ethnic divisions led to violent conflict.
A peace agreement was reached in 2018, but progress in implementing it has been slow.
“A lot of things are changing now, but it’s not getting any better,” Bol said. “We would hope for the best, that at some point things will get better and there won’t be as much fighting. Even after the independence, there’s still tribal fights where people attack you and your tribe and kill you even though you’re innocent.
“It’s too much. A lot of work needs to be done.”
The war led Bol on an unexpected basketball journey
Milwaukee Panthers center Moses Bol (33) looks to pass the ball against the Green Bay Phoenix during the second half of a Horizon League game Sunday, February 13, 2022, at UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena.
Bol’s plan throughout high school after moving to the capital of South Sudan, and later the city of Wau, was always to continue his education.
Bol had thoughts of playing soccer at an academy, but those programs were not attached to academic institutions. Plus, at his height, he may have been too tall anyway – even if he was convinced he could be the next Peter Crouch, an English striker who is one of the tallest to ever play in the Premier League.
So Bol was accepted to college in South Sudan and prepared to begin classes following his graduation from high school in 2016. Then?
“Things got worse,” Bol said.
Civil war violence forced the school he planned to attend to shut down completely before he even started.
Not long after, an unlikely opportunity presented itself to Bol. Luqman Rashad, the founder of sports academy MPAC Sports Sudan, reached out.
“‘You can come and study here,'” Bol said Rashad told him. “‘You can make a big transition and you can go to the U.S..’
"I had been wanting to go to the U.S. for a while, but my parents never really let me.”
The twist: It was a basketball academy. And Bol barely played the sport.
Bol hadn’t picked up a basketball at all until 2014, when he was 16. Even then, there was only one court in Wau, so he played sparingly.
“He was like, ‘Oh, we will make it work,’” Bol said. “I was like, ‘OK, whatever.’ I didn’t have anything to do anyway, so I just went and trained with him for a few months.”
With connections to colleges in America, the MPAC staff trained Bol up to 196 pounds and found him a landing spot at Colby Community College in Kansas.
Bol couldn’t have been much more in over his head on the court. Not only was it a new country with a new style of play and terminology, but in many cases he didn’t even understand the basics of the sport. Screen? Pick and roll? A foul limit?
“What we did in Sudan, we just would go and throw the ball out and run around,” Bol said. “It was never organized basketball. I had never really played an organized game.
“I didn’t even know they counted points and stats.”
Bol, however, had two distinct things working to his advantage: height and his work ethic.
“One thing about Moses is he tries really hard at everything,” Lundy said. “School, basketball, you name it. The obstacles he has with language and culture and he hasn’t played tons of basketball, it’s pretty amazing. He overcomes a lot of that just because he tries so hard.”
After two years at Colby, Bol transferred to NCAA Division I Central Florida before the 2019-20 season. Due to injuries, he never saw the floor but earned his bachelor’s degree. With two years of eligibility remaining, Bol transferred to UWM, where he knew Panthers director of recruiting Jason Newkirk from his time as an assistant at Colby.
Bol played in 25 games last season under head coach Pat Baldwin, averaging 12.1 minutes and 1.7 points. When Baldwin was fired after the season and there was an exodus of players, Lundy sat Bol down shortly after being hired and stressed that the center should stay in Milwaukee and finish his master’s.
“A kid like that, who cares what happens basketball-wise?” Lundy said. “He’s changing his life. I said, ‘Look, I don’t care if you play basketball. Get your degree. Do what you need to do for you.’”
Bol is thriving in Milwaukee, but home is on his mind
Bol has become an integral part of a rejuvenated Milwaukee program, especially late in the season as his production has surged and playing time increased. Those around the Panthers say he’s the most joyful person on the team. Fans embrace him. But that doesn’t mean it’s always been easy.
“As far as being in Milwaukee, he just finds a way,” Lundy said. “He obviously gets a check for scholarship and all that, but he has to make do with what he has. And sometimes I worry he doesn’t have anything. There’s some hardships. He doesn’t have anybody to come to his help, come to his aid.”
Bol has regular communication with one member of his family overseas, his younger brother, who he texts often. Another brother is able to call him from time to time.
Communication can be extremely limited by the Sudanese weather. The villages of South Sudan, Bol says, is where the impact of climate change can truly be seen. When it does rain, there is intense flooding. When it doesn’t, there is drought and famine as crops don’t grow.
“In the western world, you can’t really see how the climate controls everything,” Bol said. “There, it’s bad. People really are suffering badly. Animals are suffering. People have to dig wells to try to get the water out of the ground, or it floods and you can’t go anywhere.”
Because of this, Bol has minimal communication with his mother, who spends much of the year living in the village tending to the animals.
“I will spend months not talking to my mom,” Bol said. “She has to walk a lot of distance to get the service to call me. She can’t walk during rainy season because you will drown.”
Not only have Bol’s parents never been to the U.S., they don’t even know he plays basketball.
“None of my family, especially my mom and dad, knows what basketball is and what actually I do,” Bol said. “They’ve never seen me play. They don’t know anything about basketball. They just know I go to school because they are really big on school.”
Home is always on Bol’s mind.
“I always wanted to leave for school,” Bol said. “I always wanted to study and have more knowledge and then bring that back home. I don’t really think of it as leaving completely, because I will never forget them. I will never forget those people, my family and everyone in Sudan.”
Bol plans to put his public administration degree to use in government and public services. Some day, he hopes, that will include moving back home.
“I’d like to go back and help and share the knowledge that I know with the people back there and kids back there,” Bol said. “I would never move away and have my life and just move on and forget about those people. Even when I dream or anything I do, it somehow has them in it.
“I cannot ever wipe them out of my life.”
