When Tom Vom Steeg, the University of California Santa Barbara soccer coach, went to watch this new high school kid from Ghana play in a local youth league match, his jaw dropped.

First, this scrawny kid had a well-cultured left foot that could do magical things with the ball. Second, this kid loved to time his slide tackles for maximum impact. Third, nobody could catch him on the field — his pace frightened opponents. Finally, the coach noticed this kid was playing as a central defender. Whenever he won the ball in his defensive end, he would dribble sixty yards through both teams and score.

“I said ‘wow, that’s quite a centerback’,’’ recalled Vom Steeg, head coach for the men’s UC-Santa Barbara soccer team.

As one of the starting central defenders for The Dunn School, Michael Tetteh — the Sounders top draft pick in the 2011 MLS SuperDraft — was the team’s second highest goal scorer. Before coming to Dunn, Tetteh played goalkeeper for his academy team in Ghana.

But Tetteh left behind his goalie gloves when he arrived in the United States. Given a rare opportunity to escape crushing poverty and start new life in a new land, Tetteh wanted a fresh start with the game he loved. “When Michael came to America, he had no interest playing goalie,’’ recalled Mark Geriak, head soccer coach for Dunn School. “It wasn’t really until high school that he started playing on the field.’’

Tetteh wasted no time making his mark on the soccer pitch. Almost immediately, high school, club and college coaches knew this young boy was something special. True, he was raw, his right foot was weak, he didn’t pass as much as should, but the kid could play! His pace, his ball skill and his imagination set him apart from nearly everyone. “He is blessed with some unbelievable natural ability,’’ Vom Steeg said. “He could be one of the better players in the MLS.”

Tetteh’s story, though, goes beyond the soccer pitch. His is a remarkable journey that literally saw him plucked out of an impoverished village in north-central Ghana and ultimately plopped into affluent America. A combination of immense talent and hard work moved him one step closer to his dream – a professional contract with Major League Soccer and playing for the Seattle Sounders.

But Tetteh’s journey was not easy. Along the way, Tetteh had to endure the loneliness of living in a foreign land (he has not seen his family for six years), he had to handle the tension of attending an affluent Santa Barbara private boarding school, and he has had to face the pressure to perform on the soccer pitch if he wanted to make it as a professional soccer player.

“He has found his way from utter poverty to Seattle, which is just a mecca for soccer in the U.S,” Geriak said. “It’s such a wonderful story that has come together for such a wonderful young man.”

Clearly, Tetteh’s narrative remains unfinished. The final chapters will be written here in the Emerald City. How will he write it? The pages are blank. He still has to make the team. He still has to adjust to the physical nature of the MLS. And he still has to fit within the team culture and the Sounders’ style of play. But the people who coached him during his high school and college years believe he will write a masterpiece. No matter how his story ultimately ends, Tetteh’s journey from Odumasi, Ghana to Seattle, WA. is already worthy of its own book and is more riveting than most reality TV shows.

Tetteh grew up in a small village called Odumasi. It is located in rural area a few hours northwest of Accra, Ghana’s capital. More than a third of the country’s output is in agriculture, primarily cocoa production. Jobs are sparse and poverty runs high in this West African nation. His dad had to move to Accra to find work. A non-profit organization called Right to Dream, charged with developing talented soccer players and educating them, advertised a tryout over the radio.

“So I went,’’ Tetteh said, who was 11 years old at the time. “I was one of the 18 guys that were picked. I lived in the academy for six years. Obviously now the academy has expanded and there’s so many things going on but when it started it was just a few of us and we had to go through a lot of stuff.

“But I was fortunate to have a good coach and a good staff and everyone who was around us at that time was very, very impressive and has helped us, basically taught us everything that we knew,’’ Tetteh said. “Right to Dream is what made me who I am today.’’

A big part of what Right to Dream offers is an education. True, the soccer academy is trying to develop potential pro talent for Europe and America, but the young athletes who show academic promise are placed in top high schools in America or Europe. That’s how Tetteh made the 9,000 mile trek to the Dunn School in Santa Barbara. He received a scholarship to the boarding school along with several of his classmates from the Right to Dream Academy.

For a 14-year-old boy from West Africa, the sun-kissed shores of Santa Barbara looked like the promised land. But adjusting to the lifestyle wasn’t so easy. Tetteh had to navigate a mind bender: leaving extreme poverty and entering a world of extreme wealth. Suddenly, he was eating three meals a day in a private dining hall surrounded by students coming from families with net worths of seven, eight and nine figures. Jetting off to ski vacations in Aspen or splashing in the azure waters off Hawaii was a regular school-break activity. He experienced this lavish lifestyle knowing that his parents and brothers and sisters struggled to find work, shelter and food.

“It truly is a culture shock to go from the poverty in Ghana to Santa Barbara County, where life is good,” Geriak acknowledged. “All of these boys are polite and humble. These boys were wonderful members of the community at Dunn, hard working and thoughtful, and in some ways, some of the best leaders we’ve had here.”

While Tetteh took advantage of the social perks that come with a private boarding school, he also walked in another world. He and his other Ghanian classmates often pulled down part-time jobs to earn money to send home to their familis. Every summer, Tetteh worked soccer camps until pre-season started with the Gauchos.

At one point, Vom Steeg noticed that Tetteh and his Ghanian teammates looked thinner than usual and seemed unexpectedly weak and tired. He learned they were skipping meals and had sent most of their college meal-ticket money back to their families. “It’s different worlds, different cultures,” Vom Steeg said. “We’d give out meal money and we’d find out these guys aren’t eating, but rather sending their money home. They are living in a completely different world than us.”

Homesick after six years? Too bad. For Tetteh and the other Ghanians, the first priority was send the $1,300 home to help your family survive rather than buy the plane ticket to go see them.

“I think a kid like this wakes up every single day and knows he has been blessed,’’ Vom Steeg said.

It appears that Tetteh has been blessed in many ways. But the biggest is his ability to manipulate a soccer ball. According to Vom Steeg, Tetteh has tremendous change of pace. He’s able to push the ball, cut it back, and then he can push it again, or from his first cut he can take it inside. “He can literally lose anybody,’’ Vom Steeg said. “There is nobody who stay with him if he successfully executes that sequence. What he can do with his left foot is remarkable.”

For the Gauchos, Vom Steeg played Tetteh at center midfield, deployed him as a left back in a 3-5-2 formation, as a wingback in a 4-3-3 system and as an outside midfielder. He ended his college career playing left back. “He can really do a lot of damage on left mid, if given some freedom,” Vom Steeg said. “When he’s absolutely at his best is when he’s able to take his first touch in space and run at people. At that point he is kinda unstoppable.”

Tetteh will need to improve his ability to play with his back against the defender and continue to develop his right foot, Vom Steeg said. “He’s not comfortable with his back to the goal. We found the deeper he would come, get him the ball early, is when he’s at his best. And his left foot is so good, sometimes he would overly rely on it. He can use his right foot. We’d always get after him a lot about using his right foot. We talked to him about adding versatility to his game.”

Vom Steeg believes the Sounders are perfect for Tetteh. The team’s technical, attacking style of play suits Tetteh’s skills. He can fit well under Coach Sigi Schmid’s system of play — particularly as an attacking left back or left wing. And Tetteh is still developing as a player. Vom Steeg asserts that Tetteh’s best is still to come. “Sigi works with players,” he said. “Sigi will improve a player’s game. He’s had experience taking players and putting them in different positions. He knows the college game.

“I’ve known Sigi for a long time,” Vom Steeg said. “He drafts players that he’s comfortable with. I know he’s seen our team play quite a bit over the last three years. He knows what’s he’s getting. I think Michael will be able to step in and contribute right away.”

That’s certainly Tetteh’s ambition. He says his goal is to work hard and get selected for the starting squad. He understands there are some “great players” in Seattle and he hopes to learn from all of them. “With Seattle’s style of play, I think it’s going to be a very good fit for me and I could see myself going in and starting,’’ he said. “I am very very excited.”

But no matter how enthusiastic he is for himself, playing professional soccer means so much more. For Tetteh and thousands of Africans trying to escape poverty and bleak futures, making it to the pros means his family in Ghana will be living better. “I’m looking forward to moving on and doing things in my life,’’ he said, “because I have a lot of responsibility in my life to take care of and I have things I want to do for myself and for my family in Ghana.

“I haven’t seen my family in six years. I love them to death and everything but there’s just things I have to take care of and my goal is to go home this year to see them,’’ he said. “I actually haven’t told them about what’s happening. I haven’t told them I got a (professional) contract. I haven’t told them anything. They are going to be very, very excited for me and I’m looking to the day that I go home and see them.”