Why now?  "I'm not getting any younger," Kalekeni Banda explains. He is 56.

In the 1980s, Kalekeni Banda helped put the University of Massachusetts women's soccer team on the map, coaching the Minutewomen to six consecutive NCAA appearances, including four trips to the Final Four. In 1987, his UMass women played for the national championship, losing 1-0 to the University of North Carolina. Twice he was a national coach of the year.

Coach Banda would later coach the men's soccer team at Amherst College, and then pilot the University of Wisconsin men and the University of Albany's women's teams.

He founded his own soccer-training program, "Banda Bola," which integrates African music with rhythmical choreographed movements on the soccer field.

In 1999, Coach Banda was inducted into the University of Massachusetts' Sports Hall of Fame.

He has always wanted to go home to the small farming village in the African country of Malawi where he first learned soccer.

Coach Banda was the third of five children, the son of a United Nations diplomat. His memories of childhood include rarely walking two or three steps without kicking a ball.

"My coaching career started when I was 10," he says. "I was always organizing something. I had this passion."

He still does.

When he was a teenager, his family moved to Germany, and then to a suburb of New York City.

"It was a cultural shock," Coach Banda admits. "But it was a good shock, too. You go from village life to the big city. One thing remained consistent: soccer."

After graduating from Mamaronek in 1971, Coach Banda was awarded a scholarship from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he played soccer and ran track. He graduated in 1975 and started a life far from Africa, but his homeland was always within memory's reach.

"I came from a village of people helping people," Coach Banda says. "It was my parent's legacy. My grandparent's legacy. I wanted to keep that legacy going in my own way."

Last year, Coach Banda started the Chituka Village Project, a small charity he personally runs for his childhood village.

"It is funded with soccer clinics and demonstrations that I do," he says. "We collect used and new sports gear and school supplies for Chituka Village and the surrounding area in Malawi. It is designed to attract children to go to school and shun activities that keep them away from education. I think of the project as a dangling carrot in front of the children."

He has the names of 500 children he wants to help on a handwritten list.

Coach Banda now lives in Albany. He still speaks with the accent of his homeland. His daughter, Marita, is a senior at UMass. His daughter, Nyaika, is a chef in Northampton.

For the past month, Coach Banda has been giving soccer clinics on Wednesdays in the Allsports Soccer Arena at the Three County Fairgrounds in Northampton.

He returned to Chituka Village for a good chunk of December and January. He stayed with his sister, Sekani Banda-Nyasulu, who lives on the family farm and runs an orphanage.

"In Malawi, you negotiate everything," he says. "Potholes, goats, and chickens in the road. There is little electricity. You learn patience - fast. It was good to be home, but most of the people I knew, grew up with, are gone, no longer with us. AIDS, malaria, poverty."

Coach Banda says the life expectancy in his homeland is 37 years.

"There are four middle schools," he says. "Education is free, but there is no law that you have to go to school. There are few pens and notebooks and textbooks. But mostly there is not a lot of hope. So many children thrust into the role of being a parent to their siblings. Orphans. No sense of childhood. I can't do everything. But I can do something. If you want to help, call me, (518) 608-4509."

Coach Banda has started reaching out to former players for donations of used sports equipment, including tennis rackets, baseball gloves, books, and school supplies that he will package and send to Africa.

"My eventual goal is to set up a system for volunteers to come to the village to coach or teach," he says. "But first things first. The infrastructure has to be built. I have to do this while I am capable, while I am still in good shape. While I still have time. Hope is a precious commodity."

Tom Shea can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it