By Mike Lopresti, Gannett

What can graduation mean to a college athlete? Let's not ask the star who stops by briefly on the way to the NBA or the head case who bad-acts his way off campus or the occasional class attendee who drops out two hours after his final game. Let's ask the distance runner from Northern Arizona University who had to flee for his life in Africa as a kid and eat meals in the street.

"This is a moment that comes once in a lifetime," Lopez Lomong said over the phone about graduation day this Friday. "I stick to it. I cannot drop this baton, and I'm going all the way to the finish line."

Lopez Lomong? The name might ring a bell.

He is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. First came his abduction from Mass one Sunday morning at the age of 6, by rebels who wanted to make him a child soldier in their civil war. Then his escape, as he outran men who wanted to kill him. Then 10 years in a refugee camp in Kenya, while his family, assuming him dead, held a ceremonial burial.

Then better days. His resettlement in the USA with a foster family in New York. His U.S. citizenship. His 2008 Olympic berth. And guess who carried the U.S. flag at the opening ceremony in Beijing? That's the last time many of us saw him.