Unconventional Finn just getting started
By Jill Lieber, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — Columbia defensive tackle Michael Quarshie grew up in Helsinki, Finland, but stinks at winter sports. He sang soprano in a noted European boys choir but gave football a try when his voice changed. He speaks four languages (sometimes in the same conversation), interned in sales and trading at Citigroup last summer, is doing an independent research study on Finnish poetry, will graduate in December with a degree in political science but has his sights, and his heart, set on pro football.
Michael Quarshie has a 3.6 grade-point average and an Ivy League-leading 14 tackles for a loss.
Columbia University
"All my life, I've been different," the 6-3, 287-pound Quarshie says. "I've never been one to do what everybody else is doing. I'm the guy who breaks the mold."
Today, Quarshie, 24, is trying to become the first Finn to break into the NFL. A senior tri-captain for the 0-4 Lions, he's the most dominating defensive lineman in the Ivy League. He leads the Ivy with 14 tackles for loss, double the second-place total. He had an NCAA all-division record-tying eight Sept. 18 against Fordham. He runs 40 yards in 4.8 seconds and has a 33-inch vertical leap. And he has a 3.6 grade-point average and has been named to the dean's list.
"He's one of the most mature college football players, and one of the smartest people, I've ever been around," says Lions head coach Bob Shoop, a 1988 Yale graduate with a degree in economics. "He's incredibly intelligent, driven and focused. He'll be successful at anything he does."
Quarshie was bred to excel. His mother, Tuula, who is Finnish, is a psychiatrist. His father, Emmanuel, who is Ghanian, is a dentist. Michael, the oldest of two boys, was born in Erlangen, Germany, lived in Ghana for several months when he was 6, then, a year later, the family settled in Helsinki. At 9, he auditioned for Cantores Minores, the prestigious Helsinki Cathedral boys choir, and became a first soprano.
"I didn't have an interest in sports," Quarshie says. "A lot of people make assumptions about Finns — that we're great at winter sports. Frankly, I (stink) at them."
Being one of the few dark-skinned people in a blond, blue-eyed land helped make Quarshie an independent thinker.
"Michael matured earlier in social relationships," Tuula says. "He had to think of problems other children don't have to face early on in life — who he was, why he was different. It gave him a strong sense of self."
When he was 14, while taking a sabbatical from choir as his voice was changing, Quarshie saw a football game on TV between two Finnish teams and was instantly smitten. So he signed up for flag football with the Helsinki Roosters, one of the most successful American football clubs in Finland. He hated every minute.
"You couldn't tackle anybody," he says.
But he stuck it out until he turned 15 and became old enough to play for the Roosters' 18-and-under tackle team.
"I became obsessed with American football," says Quarshie, who put himself through a crash course on the game, buying tapes over the Internet of NCAA and NFL games. Once a month, he drove two hours to train with Anna-Maija Yliluoma, a world-class powerlifter. Some seasons, he played for two Roosters teams.
"He gave his all, six days a week, in the rain and snow," his father says.
All that devotion paid off. In 1999, Quarshie led the Roosters to the Eurobowl semifinals, was named a Maple League All-Star and had a league-leading 11 sacks. After completing his mandatory Finnish military service, he reached a fork in the road: college in Europe or football in America?
Quarshie chose the road less traveled.
"There's nothing higher you can shoot for than the NFL," he says.
Defensive end Sami Porkka, the first Finn to receive an NCAA football scholarship (Northern Colorado), suggested Quarshie make a highlight tape to send to U.S. colleges. Quarshie also networked with Americans playing in the National Finnish Football League. Jeff Skinner, a former Wagner quarterback, forwarded the tape to St. Peter's College in Jersey City.
Quarshie was an instant hit there. In his first two seasons, 2000-01, he made Division I-AA midmajor All-America teams. He had a 3.86 GPA in the political science and classical civilization honors program.
Then he needed bigger challenges. So he made a new highlight tape and sent it to Ivy schools — except for Columbia, where he hand-delivered it to the football office.
To comply with NCAA transfer rules, Quarshie sat out the 2002 season. Last year he led the Lions with 12 tackles for loss and was second-team all-Ivy and academic all-Ivy. Shoop, whose brother John is quarterbacks coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, says Quarshie is "on the NFL's radar screen" and has spoken to scouts from most every NFL team. He's also is trying to get Quarshie into an all-star game.
"Michael's somebody I'd want my two sons to emulate," Shoop says.
After graduation, what will Quarshie's future hold? "Nothing has jumped out at me except football," he says. "One day I'd like to live in Asia, because it's one place I've never visited. But right now I want to play in the NFL, and I'll live anywhere I can to get the opportunity to play."
