Football | 9/2/2024 11:30:00 AM

Navy senior fullback Daba Fofana has played football with genuine passion for many years. During his time as a midshipman at the Naval Academy, Fofana has learned much more about himself, through football experiences and the other serious interests that drive him.
 
Fofana, who majors in applied physics and carried a 3.59 grade point average into the fall semester, is pursuing a career in medicine, a path he says he started contemplating in high school.
 
After taking two medical college admissions tests earlier this year, Fofana is being considered for a Navy Medical Corps service assignment, a premedical program offered at the academy for the past 50 years. Fofana says he is hopeful he will be among the typically eight to 12 selectees who will enter a medical school upon graduation in May.
 
Fofana sees himself as a doctor in the orthopedics field.
 
"Growing up, biology and chemistry classes were always super fun for me in school. The human body is something you can study endlessly – learn something new every day," he says. "That fascinates me."
 
Fofana also is firmly committed to his continuing growth as a man of deep, Christian faith. He joined the academy's Fellowship of Christian Athletes group as a plebe, and rarely misses a Mass on Sunday or a weekly Bible study.
 
"My faith is essential to who I am," he says. "Being a child of God is something I love and I want to continue to let other people see that."
 
Then there is his long-running hobby as a cellist. Since fifth grade, when he chose to join his school's orchestra instead of its band or choir programs, Fofana has honed his skills as a cello player.
 
As a first-semester plebe, Fofana performed with the academy's orchestra. He looks forward to reprising that role in his final spring semester, when he no longer will face the time demands that go with being a varsity football player.
 
At the end of Navy's last two preseason camps in August, Fofana dazzled his teammates and coaches at the team's informal talent show. Last summer, he killed with his rendition of a Bruno Mars tune. Last month, he delighted his football brothers with his cover of a Rihanna song.
 
"Coming to Navy was about developing as a man. It was not just a place to come and play ball," says Fofana, who adds that no sport has ever grabbed him the way football did as an elementary school kid.
 
This fall, Fofana has no shortage of responsibilities. Besides being part of a 1-2 punch at fullback with junior starter Alex Tecza, Fofana is tackling the high honor of being voted the Mids' offensive captain.
 
Brian Newberry, Navy's second-year head coach who was the Mids' defensive coordinator for four years before that, loves what he sees in Fofana as a player, captain and a person.
 
"Daba has crushed it at our last two talent shows. He is a really sharp, genuine, sincere, well-rounded guy," Newberry says. "He wants to do everything he can to help this team win football games. He's got his own leadership style [as a captain]. He is not going to jump down anybody's throat. He's going to pull you aside and speak to you in a way that's not going to embarrass you."
 
"I love this role [as a captain]. It is an absolute blessing, because [the honor] comes from teammates whom I shed sweat and blood with," Fofana says. "On the field, when you notice something is wrong and that maybe the energy or focus isn't there, it falls on you as a captain to bring that to light and make sure we are hitting our standard."
 
"Off the field, I have to build connections with the younger guys," he adds "You need to get to know them – know what they are doing off the field – so you can help them get better. There are a lot of trials that we face."
 
Fofana faced such a trial during the 2023 season, a year after he had started seven of 12 games as a sophomore and led a 5-7 Navy team in rushing (769 yards) while averaging 4.1 yards per carry and scoring a team-high six touchdowns.
 
Last year, with the emergence of Tecza, Fofana saw his production drop significantly. One season after he carried the ball a team-high 186 times, Fofana had only 72 rushing attempts. He averaged a solid 3.9 yards and scored three touchdowns.
 
"It's definitely been a learning experience," Fofana says. "I had to learn to have a lot of patience last year, being behind Alex and waiting for an opportunity to come. You have got to keep grinding and working like you are the starter, no matter what."
 
"I had a lot of self-reflection, which led me to do a lot more work in the offseason," adds Fofana, who's 5-feet-8, 213-pound frame shows the work he has done in the weight room. "At the very least, I had to take on more of a leadership role. Now, there is a next-level appreciation for being able to play a game I have never taken for granted."
 
Tecza's rise last year kicked in with his breakout game in week three at Memphis, where he started his first game and gashed the Tigers for 163 yards on 15 carries, including a 75-yard touchdown run in Navy's 28-24 loss. Tecza finished with a team-high 758 yards rushing and five TDs. He averaged an impressive 6.0 yards per carry. He also caught 16 passes for 97 yards.
 
"I thought Daba handled [the depth chart change] great. I felt a little bad about it, because he's my buddy," Tecza says. "But he was still on the field a good bit last year and he will be this year. I was very nervous before that Memphis game. Daba calmed me down."
 
"When I got here in '22, I had not lined up in a three-point stance since third grade. I wasn't comfortable with triple option principles, didn't feel like I fit in," Tecza adds. "Daba helped me a lot with that and with the mentality game. He is such a caring guy who brings energy to the [fullbacks/quarterbacks] room every day. He is always hustling, always detailed in what he does. Being a captain on an FBS football team is no little deal."
 
"Daba Fofana is my favorite player on this team. He never complained to me last year about a thing," Navy quarterback Blake Horvath says. "I think he did a great job embracing his role in our goal-line packages, and his role as more of a bruiser instead of a finesse guy."
 
"We love Daba, but our favorite pastime is messing with him about being a nerd," Horvath adds. "But sometimes when he talks, you are reminded he is by far the smartest person in the room."
 
As the son of Souleymane and Sasha Fofana, Daba – which means "hard worker" – was named after his grandfather (Souleymane's father). Souleymane is from the Ivory Coast, which is located on the southern coast of West Africa.
 
Sasha Fofana, who is originally from Illinois, described her oldest of three children with some amusing memories. She says by the time Daba was four years old, he could figure out double-digit addition and subtraction problems, but he would barely speak. He hardly slept, but he was very energetic. He rarely cried or complained.
 
"He was a very interesting, well-behaved young child. Whenever he saw a crowd, he wanted to be a part of whatever was going on and he could fit in," Sasha Fofana says. "That is how he is now. He fits right in with the jocks, or the physics students or the members of the orchestra. And he is all in on anything he wants to do."
 
A 2021 graduate of West Forsyth High School in Cumming, Ga., Fofana led the Wolverines to three consecutive region titles (2018-2020) in football. After he had committed to Navy, a knee injury ended his senior season prematurely.
 
Michael Cox, who was Fofana's running backs coach at West Forsyth for that one season, says Fofana made such an impression on him that the two have maintained contact ever since. While he was rehabilitating his knee, Fofana assisted Cox at every practice, pouring everything he could into coaching the younger running backs.
 
"We hit it off right away. Daba is so honest and humble. Smartest guy on the team, never spoke badly about anyone," Cox says. "He took all AP classes that year. He was never out there, messing up on the weekends. He is the epitome of doing things the right way. He's like a renaissance man. There was never a bad day with Daba."
 
Brian Fish, the director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the Naval Academy, marvels at Fofana's humility and curiosity.
 
[Fofana] is a guy with many gifts. But what really makes him tick is not the accolades of this world but wanting to be in the right relationship with God," Fish says. "It's been exciting to walk with him on that journey as his understanding of his faith grows. He wants to be a source of good in this world."
 
Navy assistant Ivin Jasper, who has coached in some capacity at the academy for 25 years, has seen his share of exceptional players and people in the football program.
 
When Jasper thinks of Fofana, he thinks of a guy who is equally book smart and football smart. Jasper thinks of a team captain who stuck around after long preseason practices on steamy August days and worked with plebes at their practices. He thinks of a guy who was the first to congratulate Alex Tecza, following his breakout game at Memphis that night, knowing that Tecza effectively had seized the starting job Fofana wanted badly to keep.
 
"Daba is a true team player. We're all competitors. He has shown why he was voted as one of our captains," says Jasper, who coaches the Mids' quarterbacks and fullbacks. "It's still refreshing to coach these kinds of kids. There is nothing fake about him. When you get around this guy, have some conversations with him, you can't help but see he's a great person. Coaches fall in love with people like that."
 
"Before committing to Navy, I knew I wanted to play football at the highest [college] level and pursue medicine as a career. I knew it was not going to be easy. I thought it was definitely attainable," Fofana says.
 
"It's time to make all of the trials I've been through worth it. It's time to have a winning season, change the culture, leave a legacy, help this become a winning program again. It's about time all of our hard work comes to light."