This feature originally appeared in the 2020 Fall edition of the Cal Sports Quarterly. The Cal Athletics flagship magazine features long-form sports journalism at its finest and provides in-depth coverage of the scholar-athlete experience in Berkeley. Printed copies are mailed four times a year to Bear Backers who give annually at the Bear Club level (currently $600 or more). For more information on how you can receive a printed version of the Cal Sports Quarterly at home, send an email to CalAthleticsFund@berkeley.edu or call (510) 642-2427.



Kuony Deng was a tall but scrawny, 180-pound wide receiver at John Champe High School in Virginia when linebackers coaches Justin Hamilton and Mike Saint Germain of nearby Virginia Military Institute made him a proposal.
 
Despite his lanky frame and having never played a single down on the defensive front in high school, the VMI coaches proceeded to tell Deng they thought they could turn him into a 260-pound edge rusher.
 
"I literally laughed in their face," Deng said.
 
It took some complexity for Deng to get there, but those VMI assistants were on to something. Now a senior at Cal, Deng is one of the top linebackers in the country and projected as an NFL draft pick.
 
Complexity is a watchword for Deng, not only with his football story, but his personal one. After playing one year at VMI and one at Independence Community College in Kansas, Deng wound up at Cal last season and formed one of the best linebacker tandems in the nation alongside consensus first-team All-American Evan Weaver. While Weaver garnered much of the well-deserved attention, Deng ranked 15th nationally with 119 tackles and earned All-Pac-12 honorable mention.
 
His journey to college football's elite has been a compelling one. He did indeed play defense at VMI, and after an injury and some shuffling of the Keydets' coaching staff, Deng moved on to Independence. It was there he emerged as a top prospect. Considered the top junior college linebacker in the country, Deng received several offers from top programs before deciding on Cal.
 
"Coach Hamilton said they could put some weight on me, put me on the edge, and send me to the NFL one day," Deng said. "I had no concept of what they were saying. They were telling me I was going to be a defensive end and weigh 260 pounds by the time I left college. I could not believe them to save my life."
 
Deng's path to college football stardom began much earlier when his parents left the civil war taking place in their homeland of South Sudan and settled in San Diego after spending time in a few refugee camps in East Africa. Deng was born in San Diego, the fifth of six children, three of whom were born in Africa and three born after the family came to the States.
 
The Deng family moved around, spending time in Minneapolis and northern Iowa before winding up in Virginia. Kuony (pronounced COIN) and his siblings were raised by their mother, Nyarok Chan, after their father returned to Africa.
 
"The biggest thing about the way my mom raised me was really instilling that value of family and community," Deng said. "The South Sudanese people are very tribal, very clan-like. The family is everything. That's something my mom really instilled in me."
 
As Deng grew older, he researched the culture and history of his people. He vividly remembers the day in 2011 when South Sudan gained its independence after a decades-long civil war.
 
"I got to see my mother, I got to see my aunts, my uncles, my cousins who are a little older – I got to see the tears on their face when we were finally able to get that independence," Deng said. "Those are memories and things that weigh heavily on who I am as a person and the way that I think.
 
"The type of emotion and the type of response that I saw in so many of my elders and the family in my community was something that I realized was different from anything I had experienced in my life. That made me understand it was something different from anything I had ever seen before."
 
Deng didn't ultimately pick Cal just because of the family-oriented nature of its football program. The academic benefits are obvious, but for someone like Deng, so is the campus culture. He has taken his share of classes on African-American heritage, and also joined SEESA – the Somali, Ethiopian, Eritrean, South Sudanese, Sudanese Student Association, for which he serves on the board.
 
"It's an opportunity for East African students on campus to find community and be around each other," Deng said. "There is a big Ethiopian population in the East Bay and there are some students at Berkeley. For me, it was cool to find some community that come from a similar region and have similar experiences.
 
"Also, just being a Black person at Berkeley. There aren't too many of us. To go find some community and a little bit of home on campus – that's been something that has been cool to me."
 
Deng was visiting his sister, Nyajuok, in Maryland when George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in May and the nation erupted in protests. After hearing about Floyd's death, Deng attempted to avoid the video of it as long as possible before finally seeing it on Nyajuok's television. He immediately went to the bathroom and threw up.
 
"We sat together for a while afterward. It was almost like a weird grieving process," said Nyajuok, who is an attorney for a private federal contracting firm in Washington, D.C. "I was thankful we had each other there. I think I radicalized him a little bit. It's something we definitely talk about all the time."
 
Deng was active in Bay Area protests in the days after Floyd's killing and brought several teammates and staff along with him. At a protest in Berkeley, he and teammate Zeandae Johnson passed out water to protesters as they marched by.
 
"I'm really impressed with what he's been able to do," Johnson said. "He wants to support where he can. His mind is working. It's a beautiful thing to watch, the way he sprang into action. He definitely has leadership qualities outside of football."
 
Deng is expected to put on an NFL jersey next year, and has some big plans after that. Deng has never visited his homeland. He hopes to not only return to Africa someday, but build a home in the Gambela region in Ethiopia, where his family still owns land.
 
"I'm really excited to be able to go back," Deng said. "I understand we are from a land that was not at peace. Gambela is a region that is heavily populated by South Sudanese people. I want to go back."