Passion for soccer propels Eloge Iradukunda

For Eloge Iradukunda, soccer is everywhere in his life. He finds it in family gatherings, where his loved ones huddle around the television to watch their favorite team play. It is in the way his father speaks passionately about the sport and how his siblings played with a soccer ball when they had free time. Most of all, he finds soccer in his culture, which remains in his life even though his native country, Mozambique, is halfway across the world.

These are a few of the many reasons why Iradukunda wants to pursue the sport professionally and so far, he has come a long way from where he first started. He was a two-league MVP and won Player of the Game multiple times when he attended Preuss High School UCSD. During his time at Sacramento State, he scored six goals total. He transferred to Drake University, where he studies business finance with a minor in data analytics. Now 23, Iradukunda, who lives in Des Moines, recently shared that the Des Moines Menace soccer team recruited him for their 2025 USL League Two roster. The excitement he felt was undeniable.

“I’m definitely feeling pretty good,” Iradukunda said. “This year has been a big change and there’s definitely a lot of opportunity [in the team].”

Iradukunda’s parents emigrated from Maputo, Mozambique in 2005, when he was merely three years old. They arrived in San Diego, California and they raised him along with his other seven siblings. Despite living in a busy household, he never felt neglected or forgotten by his parents. In fact, with so many of his siblings being athletic, this gave him the space to explore and discover his passion for soccer.

“My older brothers ran track, played football, and my parents saw that as an opportunity to kind of let me do my own thing and create my own path,” he says.

“I was just playing in the backyard with my older siblings, and they saw that I was pretty good,” he says. “They were like ‘No, we need to get you into soccer.’ Being in a low income family, we wanted to make sure my parents didn’t have to worry about paying for college. That’s what pushed me to pursue soccer in the future.”

Since that moment, his time in the Preuss High School UCSD soccer team helped him gain the skills he needed for college soccer. Constant practicing and team building helped strengthen his character and abilities on the field.

Once he graduated, he attended San Diego State under a scholarship, where he played for one semester as a forward in 2020. He transferred to Sacramento State to complete his freshman year and begin his sophomore year, but had a hard time affording it, since he began studying there without a scholarship. His parents moved to Iowa because of their financial situation, and Iradukunda stayed in Sacramento with one of his older brothers until he finished his sophomore year.

“[After my sophomore year] I was planning on just coming to Iowa and working and going back to college in a few years,” he says. “But luckily, my brother stepped in and told me I should look at Drake University, since they have a Division 1 program.”

When he arrived at Des Moines in 2022, Iradukunda met Leroy Enzugusi, who was already playing for the Drake University soccer team. Seeing his talent on the field, Enzugusi helped him warm up to the team and to find community through their similar cultures.

“He was playing pickup with some random people on the field, and he told me ‘I want to play for Drake’. I told him to come with me so he could play with some Drake players, and he was pretty good!,” Enzugusi, 26, says. “Coach saw us playing and decided to recruit him for the team.”

From that moment on, Iradukunda began playing as a forward for the team, where his skills on the field quickly improved, playing in 13 games and scoring twice in 2022. In 2023, he met Erich Legut, and they quickly built a close friendship that was evident on and off the field. Their bond is so strong that they even tried out for the Des Moines Menace together, and both made the team.

“Elo and I have been through so much together,” Legut, 23, says. “We’ve gone through so many hangouts, games and difficulties together, it’s felt like a whole journey. Our friendship is really special.”

Iradukunda found friendship, passion and most of all, growth in his journey to become a professional player. Through the hurdles that were thrown his way, he learned that life is like a pickup game: unpredictable but fun all the same.

This story appeared in the July edition of the Black Iowa Newspaper.