Ebiye Udo-Udoma
Ebiye had a great career representing USA in overseas competition, and was a key part of the Team USA handball squad.
- Team USA Handball Athlete of the Year
- Four-time World Championship player
- Team USA player in four sports
He’s competed in the Beach Handball World Championships in 2016, 2018, 2022 and 2024 in addition to being the assists leader at both the 2019 ANOC World Beach Games and The World Games 2022. He’s played touch rugby for the LA Royals, helping the team to the 2017 National title and himself towards a place in the US team at the 2019 World Cup. Ebiye played in two other World tournaments and the Paris Olympics.
Ebiye has competed in handball in six continents and is recognised as a leading player in the sport. In 2019 he was the North-American and Caribbean MVP and in June 2020 he was The World Games Athlete of the Month. In 2022 Ebiye was the USA Team Handball Athlete of the Year, and he was a Paris 2024 Nominee.
Not limited to handball, Ebiye has represented USA in four different sports: indoor handball, beach handball, touch rugby and beach korfball.
Handball is a fast, energetic game of sixty minutes with six players on a team. A versatile player, Ebiye excelled both as a winger where he utilized wide jumps to facilitate scoring positions and as a centerback where he utilized his vision and ball control to create opportunities for his teammates and himself.
Vegan!
Ebiye is fully vegan, and has been since December 2010, following two years as a vegetarian. Within the category of vegan, Ebiye is frugivorous, eating botanical fruit and seeds.
Ebiye was originally motivated to stop eating meat by the themes of exploitation explored in the film ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender.’
“I resonated with the culture of the protagonist’s native land ‘Air Nomads’ whom were strict vegetarians and emphasized spirituality, peace, intuition, and freedom” Ebiye tells us.
“I should note my transition to vegetarianism was driven by externally oriented concerns; the environment, animal cruelty, etc. Over the subsequent three years I increased my study of nutrition, as well as other holistic health practices, and started making connections between the specific substances I put in my body and my well-being which led to me refining my diet and lifestyle practices more with my athletic aspirations in mind, which lead me to a fruit-based diet.
“I never liked eggs or dairy and when I removed whey protein from my diet I noticed that I was, by definition, vegan. Unlike my transition from omnivorism to vegetarianism, my transition from vegetarianism to veganism was for internally focused reasons; mainly my athleticism and long-term health. I soon realized that what’s best for myself and what’s best for the greater good of man aren’t mutually exclusive.”
When we caught up with Ebiye in 2025 it was shortly after his retirement from handball.
“My training consisted of a varied plethora of movement and coordination modalities with an emphasis on non-compromised performance that allowed me to continually improve neuromuscular capacities related to the ball sports I competed in. These include footwork and agility training, juggling while running (aka joggling), calisthenics, isometrics, meditation, jump rope & rope flow, and various forms of simultaneous coordination aka Multiple Mentalism training.”
This has been fuelled entirely by fruit.
“More specifically depending on what’s in season where I am; mango, kiwi, pineapple, pomegranate, acai, cherries, peaches, pitaya, olives, tomato, peppers, eggplant, avocado, coconut.”
Vegan MVP
When he was competing he didn’t talk about this aspect of his lifestyle much
“What guys thought about it they didn’t say to my face by the time I became one of the better players in the world in my sport so maybe you should ask them” he says. “For context, my last continental championship I played with Team USA the game went into overtime shootout and I made three stops as goalkeeper to win us the championship and my teammates rushed the court to celebrate me.
“I was the MVP on the day and to celebrate my head coach took the squad out to a steakhouse that night. I was at one head of the table, man of the hour, just watching my guys eat meat and drink alcohol while not consuming anything myself before we celebrated out on the town in Puerto Rico. Situations like that became routine, I wasn’t there for the food I was there for the love of the game. If there were mandatory team meals I’d just sit through them out of obligation and take care of myself outside of those windows.”
New challenges
Ebiye retired from Team USA in 2024 and played his last club championship season in 2025. He launched a handball clinic in Nigeria, the nation of his parents’ origins.
He then started work for The World Games as a content creator and plans to continue to utilize his social media presence @HandballNinja “to be an ambassador for goodwill and advocate for opportunities in international sport similar to what I was able to experience in my career.”
Living as a vegan is part of the plan as much as ever, and Ebiye was keen to share with us some “thoughts pertaining to having an international athletic experience living a fruit-based lifestyle” which were:
“Nature is friendly to your plans” -Wallace Wattles
“Be your best, be yourself” in that order
“As within, so without” when your internal world is right your external world will be right.
“Most people don’t live out their dreams, so your goal is not to be most people. The first step to becoming extraordinary is embracing the willingness to be ‘extra’.”