Josiah Dickerson learned all about hard work long before most kids his age.

Washington High School’s starting running back lived in a Ghana, West Africa, orphanage for the first five years of his life.

“It was a really difficult situation,” Dickerson, 16, told The Purcell Register. “I had to grow up very fast.”

He recalled having to carry buckets of water for “miles” as a two-year-old.

“It was very bad, but that all seemed kind of normal to me because that’s what I grew up with,” he said. “It just wasn’t right, and I was very, very fortunate to be able to get out of that place.”

There were times when Dickerson didn’t eat.

“Some days I had to fight for food,” he said. “Some days I had to sneak out to try to get food. I was always hungry. I didn’t know how to peel a banana so I would eat the whole banana. So, I had to teach myself lots of stuff.”

In 2013, Angie and Kevin Dickerson and their 9-year-old daughter, Natalie, traveled to West Africa to adopt Josiah.

It wasn’t a smooth transition at first. It would take about three years for Josiah to feel safe enough to trust his new family, which includes sister Lainey and a brother named Rhett who is about the same age.

“We go over to meet him, and he hates all of us and doesn’t want anything to do with us,” Angie recalled. “At that point he doesn’t know our language, he has never seen a white person before and he has no idea what we’re doing. He told us later that he thought we were kidnapping him.”

The Dickersons lived near Dallas until they moved to Oklahoma during COVID. The family settled in Velma-Alma before relocating to Washington four years ago.

“It was a really big change. I had never seen white people before,” Josiah said. “I just kind of remember getting fed great meals every day ... breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, so I’m like, ‘this isn’t that bad.’”

The new environment included dogs, cats, and a bunny along with a lot of new customs. All of it scared Josiah, his mother said.

“It was fun to see the world though his eyes, but also really challenging to try to get him acclimated with the language, with the food, with white people, with everything.

“He was very scared, and we just had to cocoon at our house, and he had to learn what a mom was, what a dad was. He had to learn all of our roles and how he could trust us.”

Dickerson started playing tackle football in second grade. His parents never pressed him to play the sport.

“They wanted me to figure out my own path,” he said. “They’re very supportive. They sacrifice a lot for me to be able to pursue what I want to pursue, and they’re all in on it.”

Dickerson played football and basketball until he picked football when he was 13 years old.

“I realized I mostly have the body for football,” he said. “The speed and strength for football. So, I started taking football really, really seriously.”

The 5-foot-7, 170-pound sophomore, is carrying the load for Washington, which is one win away from playing for a fourth-straight Class 2A-I state title.

Dickerson has rushed for 1,281 yards and 15 touchdowns on 108 carries, an average of 11.8 yards per carry.

“You have to have good vision, of course, find the right gaps,” he said. “It’s like a good guessing game but a smart guessing game. When you have an offensive line like mine, it feels like the gap is always open. It’s fun with our line.”

Dickerson and the Warriors face Oklahoma Christian on December 5 at Yukon High School. The winner will play either Jones or Marlow for the title.

“Josiah is a kid that never takes a day for granted,” Washington coach Brad Beller said. “He makes the most of every situation and sees the best in everyone.

“He makes my day better when I get to see him. Josiah is a great football player, but his football story only tells a small part of his story.”

Dickerson has always been a hard worker who never takes anything for granted because he remembers his life in the orphanage, his mother said.

“He’s very driven and he always has been,” Angie said. “Since he came home, he was a really hard worker, and that was something that we learned was his life in the orphanage. He had to work to survive. Even at three and four and almost five he would have to go out and find food.”

Dickerson returned to Ghana in March with his mother and others affiliated with Touch of Life Foundation, a human rights nonprofit working to end human trafficking and child exploitation. There they helped drill three water wells.

The trip provided a reality check for Josiah, who struggled with injuries and didn’t play much as a freshman.

“It was very hard on him because he is such a competitor,” Angie said. “We knew we had to get him back to Ghana so he could have a perspective check and make his life bigger than football. That just changed everything for him. He came back calm and was so free, and he was filled with so much joy.

“He was able to see, ‘I am special, I have been selected to come over and do something big, and I am going to come back and I am going to make a difference.’ That’s been really helpful for him.”