Kortne Ford: Built by Pain, Driven by Purpose | Hidden Foundations Ep. 2

In this episode of Hidden Foundations, Kendall Schoenrock sits down with former MLS soccer player Kortne Ford for a powerful conversation about childhood trauma, physical abuse, grief, resilience, career-ending injuries, faith, and purpose. Kortne shares how fleeing Kansas as a child, losing both of his brothers in a car accident, and enduring years of setbacks shaped the grit that carried him to professional soccer. He also opens up about the surgery that derailed his career, the mental toll of staying silent, and how faith ultimately helped him rebuild his life after retirement. This episode also explores parenting, youth sports politics, emotional intelligence, and the mission behind Faith First Soccer Academy in Kansas City. If you care about leadership, healing, fatherhood, sports, and the family systems that shape us, this is one of the most honest Hidden Foundations conversations yet.

Hidden Foundations is a weekly podcast hosted by entrepreneur and investor Kendall Schoenrock, examining how family systems, early adversity, and childhood dynamics quietly shape high-performing adults. Each conversation uncovers the “invisible wiring” behind resilience, ambition, leadership, and grit — told through candid stories from entrepreneurs, athletes, creators, and leaders.

Guided by the thesis that strength is forged early at home, the show uses a consistent framework to explore emotional environments, money narratives, family roles, conflict patterns, and early challenges. Every episode delivers at least one practical, repeatable insight for parents, leaders, and anyone seeking to understand how greatness is built long before it’s visible.

Learn more or connect with Kendall:

Website: https://kendallschoenrock.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schoenrock/
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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-foundations/id1895154229

#KortneFord #HiddenFoundations #Soccer

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Very humbly saying, eyeballed. I was center back. I scored like six goals in a very short amount of time. We only had we never lost. We didn't lose until the final four for them. So that obviously helped. And then all of a sudden everybody's like, where's Courtney Ford then? I just got chills thinking about it because I probably never got the chance to tell my full story with this. It was very frustrating, but our trainer came up to me about six months after I was struggling with ongoing, and I'll get to the details here in a second, and he told me, Court, I think I should tell you that I think something went wrong in your procedure. So it was the first time in American literature that this has ever happened below the waist to somebody. And that was me. You were forced to provide cut top cover to the team that hurt you. I was forced at that time to just keep my mouth shut. I had the coaches that reach out to me, they're like, Court, keep your mouth shut.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

How would you describe yourself now?

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Oh, that's that's actually a loaded question. A grinder. A grinder, I probably could say that's where I'm at in my life right now. Just grinding.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah. What's uh why why grinder? Why is is that the adjective that you'd use to describe where you're at?

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Yeah, I mean, just turned 30 a few days ago, have a have a newborn, right? I guess she's not a newborn anymore, but almost four months old, and it's just a perfect point to kind of get our lives kind of set in stone. So working on a lot of different projects. Um have my indoor facility, um, starting a brand new academy. At the same time, I'm taking my U.S. Soccer B license course. Um, so there's just a lot of stuff going on right now, and it's kind of the perfect time considering that we have young children. Um, try to get it all up and running so by the time they they're of age, right, um I can be present in the father that I need to be. That's great. How are you sleeping?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

There's another loaded question, not sleeping much, but that's all right. Right. Yeah, I it was described to me when I had my girls as uh long days, short years. That's right. So that's right. Kansas City native. Yes. And you're building a business in Kansas City now. Um, walk me through the your early childhood and how you ended up with soccer as such a goal for you.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Yeah, so um raised by three incredible women, um, my mother and father were never married. Um, and I kind of played all the sports growing up. Um fortunately, I was, you know, had an awesome family that I consider family, even though that they weren't blood. Um, and that's my best friend, my business partner, Brandon Ramirez, and his family, them and all of my the people on my mom's side of the family, they all taught together at JC Harmon. So they were all high school teachers, and we were playing soccer out the womb, literally out the womb. Um, and so for the longest time I was playing five different sports, but um ultimately it came down to soccer and basketball, and then I sort of had to choose as I got older. Um, but yeah, being born and raised here in Olatha, and obviously me and Brandon would go over to all American indoor sports, play indoor soccer, and and we talk about it all the time, but we mentioned being able to open our own facility someday multiple times. So obviously being back here uh really full circle, and it's just an awesome opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Do you think it's important to expose uh or are you gonna expose your your daughter to as many sports as possible, or are you gonna try to pick and nudge to uh yeah?

SPEAKER_02 3:54

I think it's obviously different for boys and girls, right? I think one of the things that my wife and I talked about is probably not allowing the football to be a thing with our sons if we do have sons. Uh, but for our daughter, um, we do want her just in as many sports as possible. I think you know, early on, gymnastics, regardless of boy, girl, just to learn how to control your body and stuff like that, that's super important. But there's so many different benefits from each sport. Um, so I'm even though I want her to play soccer, of course, right, I'm gonna have her involved in everything she wants to be.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

As a professional soccer player, which other sport helps set you up to be a better professional athlete?

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Ooh, good question. I'd probably say hockey. Um, hockey was my number one favorite sport prior to moving to Colorado. And actually, when you look at the sport itself, it's very similar to soccer. Um, you know, you kind of you got the blue lines, you got the offsides, kind of all of that. But just the ability to change direction and be agile, it's a very athletic sport. So when talking about how shifty you have to be, I'd probably say that that was probably most similar. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

And and just in terms of the the way the actual sport and the speed of the sport moves, yeah, was most applicable to help you with soccer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Yeah. The setup, kind of the goalies, the offsides, how agile you have to be, change of direction, right? For sure. And obviously, basketball was actually my number one when I was in high school, but basketball was a completely different sport than soccer, right? No comparisons, but soccer is actually has a lot to a lot of similarities to hockey.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

I uh, you know, so m my daughter's been playing soccer now for a few years, and I think I'm finally starting to understand offside. I'm almost, I'm all I've almost got it. Yeah. Uh not all the time. Like sometimes they call it. I'm like, I didn't see okay. I guess that wasn't a real goal. I pull it out. I don't know. So yeah, that's a tough one.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

That's a tough one for most people that are new to soccer, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

So I I just cheer. Yeah, like it's uh it's fun. Um so let's d dive into your uh childhood because it wasn't without trauma. And I think a lot of that trauma feeds into the move to Colorado, which then fed into your pro professional career. Can you talk about the transition from fleeing Kansas and what that looked like for you in terms of your childhood?

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yeah, so if I had to think back, I'd probably say around the age of nine or ten, um was the first time that I realized that all dads didn't like really physically beat their kids. I just thought it was completely normal, if I'm being very honest. And I came home one day with you know a couple of bruises, and my mom asked me where those came from, and I was like, what do you mean? It was just dad, no big deal. And she's like, Oh no, that's not normal. Right. And so that's kind of when the custody battle started, but it kind of started behind the scenes. There was a lot of therapy that I had to go to to show to the courts that we were working and trying to work through it and all this stuff, and it was about a three-year process of going to therapy and logging everything, and then um in 2008, my mom finally got full custody, and pretty much shortly thereafter, um, there were a lot of threats that were made. Um, and my mom didn't feel safe here, and so we literally picked up everything and we fled to Colorado. Um, so we moved to Colorado in 2009, so it was shortly after we got custody. I don't I couldn't tell you the exact time frame, but I know it wasn't very long.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Was that difficult for you to understand in terms of leaving everything new, all of your friends, all of your connections?

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Yeah, that's actually a great question. No, um there was there was so much like hatred and so much um, I guess you could say trauma. Looking back, I guess you could call it trauma. I didn't feel like it was that when I was in the moment, but it was so bad, and I hated going over there so much that when my when I when we got that phone call um that my mom got custody, nothing else mattered in the world. Right? I can tell you exactly where I was that day when we got the phone call. It was snowing, there was a ton of snow out. I told her to stop the car, I hopped out, I went and rolled down the hill in the snow, like it was the best day of my life when I got that phone call. So it's a it's a weird question because I was so excited that that was behind me now that I didn't care about the leaving the friends and leaving the family and all that. We got the fresh start of going to Colorado and and kind of being back here, me and my my business partner, Brandon, obviously who's my best friend. We had a lot of conversations about kind of the trauma that it did to him, you know, and that's something that I never really had the maturity to think about. It's like, yeah, we just picked up and moved everything at the snap of a finger and just sort of left him in the dust, you know. So obviously the older you get, you you learn the impact that it has on others as well. But the quick quick answer to your question is I didn't think about anything. I was so happy to turn the page. To get it to get out, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Um, do you think there's forgiveness from your your friends that that you left? Do they understand the why, or did they under do they understand the why now?

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Yeah, I would say they do now. I don't think that they did when it was occurring, right? When we were 11 and 12 years old, there's a lot of it that our parents weren't even gonna explain to us, right? His parents weren't gonna explain him all the details that I was going through with my father and all that stuff. So um, yeah, it was tough. I think that there was a lot of resentment, there was a lot of anger that he had towards me because he didn't know the why. But obviously, after I came back and we got to have some of those adult conversations, he's like, Oh, dude, this makes so much sense. I didn't even know this. And I would and I was able to put myself in his shoes and be like, dude, I could see how that could have a big, big impact on you as well, you know. But it's just one of those things, the older you get, you realize that those are conversations that you have to have. And I think more so you realize as a parent, you have a big responsibility on what you choose to share with your kids and what you kind of you know protect from them. And shelter.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Sure. How old were you again when you moved to Colorado? Twelve. Yeah. And at at the age of twelve, you were still focused that you wanted to play professional soccer. Oh. That was your dream, that was your goal. Oh, yeah. And what steps did your mother take in that transition to help to enable you to have that success?

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Uh yeah, I could probably get emotional talking about that one. Um, there's a lot, so most people don't understand the difference in teams and and youth soccer, right? But the academy is like the best position you could be in to set yourself up for playing in college and pro. And the supporting KC was actually called Kansas City Wizards at the time. And we, me and Brandon, had just made their academy team, right? We had just made it. And shortly after, um, obviously, get the news that my mom won cust custody. We flee to Colorado, and we didn't have any money because at that time you still had to pay to play in the academy. That's not the case anymore, right? And we just didn't have any money. So most people, most people close to me know this story, but I joined a uh rec soccer team called the Greeley Bootleggers to go from playing on the best team in the state to a rec soccer team for a couple years. Um, that was a big transition, and my mom sat me down at a very young age, obviously at 12 years old, and she said, Court, we don't have the money, right? And so I grinded it out for for a year or two playing there. Um, and then that's when the grind from my mom really stepped in and didn't really value it until you're older. But the the best opportunity at that time to make it to the next level was to obviously play on the next best team, and that was all the way in Denver. So we lived in Greeley, which is North Colorado, and all of the best teams kind of trained down in Dove Valley, just two and a half hours away in traffic, right? So it would take us about two and a half hours to get there and about an hour 45 minutes to get back, right? So, and my and I mean we sort of skipped over this part, but my mom was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2009. So she was going through chemo and radiation while teaching at the high school and then driving me down there right after school, spending, you know, four or five hours in the car. At the same time, she was taking two of my friends, feeding two of my friends. We didn't have any money, so it was always an argument of how many things we got off the dollar menu at McDonald's, you know what I mean? But there was a lot of sacrifices, a lot of hours spent in the car. She would sell water bottles for 50 cents a piece at school just to pay for the gas, just to get to Denver, and that's every day. So it's like if we didn't sell enough water bottles to the kids, we don't have enough gas money to get down, right? Um, and there's just a multitude of those stories. Um, a multitude of those stories when it comes to the sacrifices that she had to make to ultimately, and I'm telling you, even our own family, they hounded us for it. They're like, Why are you driving two plus hours in the car? There's a team right here, right? Um, and my mom didn't care. She didn't care what anybody else had to say. And obviously, looking back, my career wouldn't have happened if it weren't for those sacrifices that she made.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Wow. Um how did you did you realize in the moment the level of sacrifice that she was making for you? And did that feed your drive and grit to perform because you knew it was such an opportunity? Or was there other emotion that was built into that in terms of gratitude or resentment?

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Uh, the tough answer is no, none of it. Obviously, I think that that's now that you know both of my moms per se have passed away, it's probably one of the biggest regrets is that you're not more thankful and more appreciative, and in the moment you don't recognize it, right? But as a kid, you're so self-centered that you're just focused on your own, you know. So it's like when we're in the car driving, I'm focused on the homework that I'm doing on the way down and then playing soccer. I'm not thinking, wow, what a sacrifice that my mom made to be here. So hindsight is everything, right? When you look back at it, you're like, wow, like I wish I could use my words to show my gratitude for that. But unfortunately, as a kid, when you're so self-centered, you're a little bit immature, um, you recognize it a little bit less, and that is heartbreaking, but that's part of being a kid.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Yeah, yeah. At one point, I've heard you say a text message saved your life. How did a text message save your life?

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Yeah, so 2014, that's the year that I graduated high school. Um, I call in my brothers, but two of my best friends ended up moving in with me. My mom let them move in with us. She cooked their food, they'd stay the night. Um, their names were Matt and Mono. And the day that we graduated, we had huge plans to put on this barbecue for the whole school. And I know we had a tiny house, but I mean we would have a hundred kids there at the house in the backyard. It was a really fun time. And the whole game plan was that we were gonna go to the shooting range before then, right? Um, and so me, Matt, Mono, and another friend of ours named Tyas, we all had these game plans to go to the shooting range, come back, put on the barbecue. And probably about 30 minutes before we were gonna leave for the shooting range, I get a text from my academy coach at the time, academy director in Colorado. Um, his name was Steve Cook, and he he texted me, he said, Court, we have first team training, which is you know, training with the professional team. We have first team training at 10 a.m. We weren't scheduled to have it today, but can you make it down? I know you live far away, but can you make it down in time? And I literally hopped off the couch, changed quickly, and ran out the door, right? Um, and the reason that I say that it saved my life is when I got out of that practice for that day, I got a phone call from one of our friends that told me they'd been in a car accident. Um, didn't realize the severity of it, but obviously they were killed in a car accident. And uh once again, hindsight, looking back, one of two things, right? I should have either been in the car with him, or maybe there's something that I could have done to prevent the accident, right? Could have been we stopped to get gas or stopped to get food or stop to so there's a lot of weight with that goes with that, but ultimately I say that it's a text message that saved my life because um I was supposed to be there and I wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Wow. How did that loss impact your career and your training and your ability to stay focused? Because I imagine on one hand, you're really you're having an amazing opportunity to get to play with the professionals, but at the same time you're dealing with loss of people that you're really close with.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Yeah, I think and this is pretty consistent with my life in general, but I wasn't impacted by much as a kid. Um I assume that it has a lot to do with the trauma and the abuse that I went through growing up. Um, but I was very good at just rubbing things off, right? Um I did not consciously stuff, right? It was definitely subconscious. Um but the first thing that I ever, ever, ever struggled with in my life was rupturing my Achilles with Sporting KC. And when I look back to answer your question, it wasn't me that was difficult dealing with the loss, but it was my mom. Right? She obviously she could hardly put food on the table for me. And she adopted two kids and let them live in our house and provided food, and and they were our family, right? I I do call them my brothers. Um and it hit her hard. It hit her hard. She had a really strong faith, really good relationship with God, and that's one that just rocked her whole her whole faith journey, right? So um the battle was sort of repairing things with my mom and making sure that she could stay strong because that really rocked her. And so it was me being a support system to support her, and probably a lot of the effort and energy that went into supporting her took it away from needing to support myself.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Let's go back and connect some of the dots. At this point, her cancer had had she was in remission. Yes, she entered remission in 2011. Okay. So that that was cleared up when she was helping you with soccer and then dealing with the loss of your your brothers. Right, right. Um walk me through what happens next in terms of your invitation to play professional soccer.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Yeah, so that's 2014. Um, Colorado Rapids called me in shortly after that, and they said, Core, what do you want to do? Um, do you want to sign or do you want to go to college? And a couple years prior, they asked me the question, the same question, and I said, obviously my goal is to go pro, right? Um, and they told me at that point, well, if you want to sign for us, you better stay close. And I had offers from Stanford, Clemson, Duke, Santa Clara, and I loved Santa Clara. I went on that visit. I was 100% gonna commit to Duke or Santa Clara, and uh they told me to stay close. And I looked at I did the research, and there ain't nothing close, right? But the University of Denver. Um, and so out of respect, I went on that visit. Uh, Jamie Franks, he was one of the regional national team coaches at the time where they have like these I don't know, you call them camps or training sessions that they can sort of get eyes on players. And I went to one of those and he was one of the coaches, and he invited me on campus. And I just went to not burn the bridge, you know, politics, right? Yeah, and I got on campus and I fell in love with the place. It was beautiful. Um, the facilities, the staff, the vision, the campus itself, it was just beautiful. So I actually considered it. Um, so shortly after we get up to to graduating, and I made the final decision that I'm not gonna sign out of high school and I'm gonna go to college for a year or two. Um, so I had a lot of things that I was insecure about. I was 6'2, 154 pounds. So I was really insecure about how skinny I was, right? I wanted to go to college, put on some weight. Um, so basically around that time, my second mom, who was actually my godmother, she was diagnosed with stage four liver cancer. Um and so that happened. I leave for college, I ended up playing for a year or two, it went great, it went awesome. I ended up playing two and a half seasons. Um, and then I ended up signing my first professional contract in 2017, January of 2017.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

And how old were you?

SPEAKER_02 20:52

I was 20.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

What walk me through what it feels like to get an invitation to play professional soccer at 20 and to make that decision to you you're leaving college, correct? Yeah. So you're gonna leave college and go play professional sports, accomplishing a dream that you had since you were very little. Yeah. What does that feel like?

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Yeah, I think when you're when you're in the moment, it kind of felt surreal. Like the one moment that really stood out to me that felt surreal was buying my first car. Right? I think that was the first time that I was like, wow, like I made it. You know what I mean? Like I would just sit in my car for hours, just listen to music, you know. So that feeling felt um that feeling felt great. And the other time was like when my signing bonus finally hit. So when you when you sign in the MLS, typically you don't get paid for like three months, but you get back paid, right? And I'll never forget the day that I saw that money hit the account because I never up to that point had more than $100 in my bank account. So crazy, crazy story is my DU, University of Denver's on a quarter system, right? So 10 weeks and then your last. Week is finals week, and she would give me a hundred dollars per quarter for food, right? So a hundred dollars to split up in 11 weeks, and I thought it was the most money in the world. I was like, this is great, I can stretch a hundred dollars, you know. So to see all those zeros in the bank account when my sign, it it was a surreal feeling, overwhelming for sure. Uh, but wanted to help my mom in that. So I think just because of the background, I think that the financial piece was probably the biggest like aha moment, right? That I made it. But there wasn't a ton of that around signing professionally. I think it happened so gradually. And and I had a really good coach at the University of Denver, Jamie Franks, who sat me down and he said, Listen, like, we don't think that college is good for you anymore. It's not developing in you, it's not challenging you. He's like, I think this is the right move for you. So just to have the support and all the tough conversations um proactively, I think it made the transition really smooth. But unfortunately, I think that the the biggest feeling came around the financial piece, which I wish wasn't the case.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Do you think so you're you're 20 and now you're surrounded by other players that are also being paid professionally and potentially come from a different background, who have a different view of money or resources? Did you feel a need to fit in and keep up with how they were spending money? Did you feel obligated to wear certain clothes or jewelry or to fit in? And how did that impact your finances?

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Yeah, great question. No, it didn't impact me until about year two or three. And, you know, one of my good friends that I went to DU with, Andre Shinishiki, we and Sam Hamilton, we all joke about it. But when we when we would go there, we would wear our shorts, our sweats, anything, and all the guys would be wearing nice outfits, and they would give us so much crap. They're like, How are you gonna wear that? You're a professional, this is your job. Like, and we did not care. We're like, we ain't spending a penny. We've never had money, right? We're not spending it, right? And then after you're sort of in that environment for a year or two, all of a sudden you see your teammates wearing Gucci, Louis Vuitton, then they get you into it, tell you where to get it, and then you start spending money. And I mean, at that point, it's not like we're making millions, right? We're not making NBA money, MLB money, right? We're making maybe 100K if you're lucky your first couple years in the in the league, right? So um to answer your question, it had a big impact, right? Because it's it's not enough money that you basically, and I told my wife this, you're faced with the decision of do you save maybe 500 bucks a month, thousand dollars a month, or do you live a good lifestyle? All right, when you're talking about saving 10k a year, you probably want to go live a good lifestyle with your friends and do things that they're doing socially. So unfortunately, when you're young and immature like that, it has a big influence on how you spend your money.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. Um, how do you think that's gonna impact uh how you're gonna teach your daughter about finances and money?

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Yeah, I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges. I think that a lot of my motivation in life was that we didn't have money and there was no plan B. And I think that obviously my daughter is not in that situation. Um, and so me and my wife being extremely aware of that and saying, hey, how are we gonna raise our daughter or kids differently, even though that they do know that they have our financial support? Um, I think that's a tough obstacle. It's a tough obstacle being able to create that adversity. Um, but I just think that sharing our stories, right, are extremely impactful, right? Um I think that there's a lot of courses, there's a lot of things that you can study in middle school and high school about finances and what you can do with your money and taxes. I just I think it's the craziest thing that I didn't even know what taxes were until I was 22 years old, even though I signed at 20. You know, it's just like so a lot of these things of prepping them and realizing what I didn't have and what advice I didn't have and just really educating them early on, I think that's the biggest thing that we can do.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Let's go back to professional soccer. Do you believe that your uh invitation to play soccer is related to the grit and the determination that you uh experienced as a child that it was from the trauma? Do you think that that your the the pressure that you experienced until the age of twelve when you fled to Colorado shaped you in such a way that you had a higher uh pain threshold or a higher tolerance than if you would have had a a childhood free from that abuse?

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah, that's a tough question. I think that it's a really good question, and it's hard to answer. I think that overall you can look back and and see that the trauma, aka adversity, is probably very correlated to the grit and drive that you have to be successful. Now, everybody knows correlation is very different than causation, right? So it's tough to go back and point at what thing led to what, but I do think that is there is it's extremely correlated, right? Um, I do think one of the things that I'm not proud of, but I do think that I learned to manipulate at a very young age. I think it's one of my biggest strengths and one of my biggest weaknesses because in order to manipulate, you have to be aware of situations, you have to be able to read people. And every time that I went to my father's home, I became a transformer. I knew how to manipulate the situation, I knew what to say to not get beat. I knew what to say to not, you know what I mean? And so when you when you're forced at a young age to sort of become a transformer and learn how to maneuver different situations, I think that ultimately that was a huge part of me making it because I understood the framework and the politics of it at a young age, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:02

In terms of your ability to read someone else's emotions, right, as an offshoot of avoiding a volatile father at home. Right. Enabled you with high emotional intelligence, right? You're now reading people, and now you're using that to your advantage to either manipulate them or put you in a better spot for success.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

For sure. For sure. And I would say that this is something that I've not been open about. Obviously, I talk about it with to my wife, but it's it's one of those things that unfortunately in in sports and youth sports, politics is huge. It's probably even bigger than a player being good or athletic or fast, right? Um, and fortunately, that was the one thing I at 12 years old, probably younger, I knew exactly what to tell a coach. I knew exactly what to not tell a coach. I knew what to say. If the coach was sitting there, I would talk differently and say things differently than when he wasn't sitting there. You know what I mean? So it's like you learn how to play the politics, and I think that that had a lot to do with my success and where I went. Um, and I it the reason that I was able to do that is not for a good reason. But I think that this is probably the thing that I'm most proud of as a man is that around that when I met my wife, I could be honest and vulnerable about that and say, hey, I want to be able to use this thing that I've developed in a good way, right? Can I be aware of the fact that I'm aware and being able to, can I use that to benefit instead of to manipulate and take advantage of situations, right? So obviously it was a defense mechanism when I was very young, but now turning into a man, right, and mature, right? And you grow, you figure out how to use those sort of attributes to be a good father and a good husband and a good business owner, and and you know, it goes on.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

So what advice would you have for a parent with a teenage sports athlete that's navigating youth politics?

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yeah, my advice would be to stay out of it entirely. And I think that that my answer would have been a lot different 15 years ago. I think that even being aware of how much politics were in youth sports or in anything, right, was something that was new, right? It's like you were considered woke if you were that aware of how to play different political cards. Now, especially in youth soccer, everybody knows, right? Everybody knows the best teams, the coaches, the relationships that you have to have. So I think it's kind of a power play right now to do the polar opposite in youth sports. I think that the players and the families that lay low and remove themselves from the politics are gonna be the ones that stick out like a sore thumb. I know myself as a coach who coaches elite, elite level players. I am so thrilled and excited to work with players and families that they just stay removed from it compared to the the families that come to me every couple months asking me to move them, teams move them to a new coach, move them to a new. It's like it's exhausting, right? And ultimately they're kids. Right. Right? They're kids. So if you use your political card too early, you don't have that card to play when they're 16, 17, 18 needing scholarships to play in college.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

I just heard you tell me that it's okay that I don't understand soccer. And that's true, right? That is very true. I can't navigate not that I have an intent, but that right, it's actually maybe a good thing. It is a good thing that uh all I have to do is cheer and and uh praise effort. It is a good thing. Just be a good father. That's all that's all you need. Remind my wife of that. That's good. Um, okay. Let's uh let me drill into to the the soccer journey uh a little bit more, uh, if that's okay. Um, because it wasn't without physical issues. So you had a a torn Achilles and then a knee issue. Um you've also somewhat described your professional career as quote a disaster. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Yeah, I do I do consider my career as a disaster. Um, and a lot of it had to do with injuries, um, more importantly, fluke injuries. This was the frustrating thing that I think hindsight's everything. Looking back, I'm like, uh, soccer wasn't my purpose. This was leading me to open a different door. But to backtrack, um, I would probably say my rookie year was the only year that I just got to enjoy the sport and enjoy where I was at. Um, it was awesome. I was MVP, I was fan favorite, I was getting all these awards. It was just awesome. And then going into year two, um, preseason game, I hyperextended my knee, and which is no big deal. It was a grade two, right? They're like, Court, you're gonna miss four to six weeks. At that point in time was my first injury ever. I thought four to six weeks sounded like the worst thing on the planet. Um, so it was an MCL, PCL sprain, grade two, four to six weeks. And I'll never, ever, ever forget after about a week going into the training room, I was laying on my stomach on the treatment table, and I could not pull my heel to my butt. Very simple task, couldn't do it. And they brought the team doctors in and they're like, Court, what's what's going on? Like, you don't you didn't have a significant injury. Why can't you pull your leg up? And they were like, Oh, they did all these tests on my hamstrings, couldn't figure it out. Long story short, the the team doctor at the time said, Hey, maybe it just scarred down over that peroneal nerve a little bit different, and that's why it's pinching. Maybe that's why you can't do it. I said, Okay, doc, like what are my options? They said, Well, we can go and stabilize or stabilize your TIB fib. That's about a 10 and a half month recovery, or we could go out and clean the scar tissue out from around your peroneal nerve. That's a two to three day recovery. I was like, uh, okay, like what are the what are the cons of the second option? What it like what are is there like doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense. Like, duh. And they're like, yeah, there's no there's no real risks. They're like, if it doesn't work, then obviously we can make it through this season and go ahead and do the the Tib Fib stabilization in the offseason. I said, okay, all right, let's do it. Worst decision of my life. So something went wrong. Um, I just got chills thinking about it because I probably never got the chance to tell my full story with this. It was very frustrating. But um our trainer came up to me about six months after I was struggling with ongoing, and I'll get to the details here in a second, and he told me, Court, I think I should tell you that I think something went wrong in your procedure. And I'll never forget the day. His face just turned pale, white. And it was almost like he was gonna be in trouble for telling me, right? He was going behind the team doctor's back, you know. And I said, John, what like what do you what do you think? Like, what do you mean? Like, what did you see? And he went into some details about, you know, something falling out of my knee onto the floor, like the doctor looking sketchy, like the details don't matter. But he was for for what I saw on his face, he was certain that something went wrong. Long story, long story short, my knee fill up ended up filling up with 300 cc's of fluid per week laterally. Nobody could figure out why. We went to Germany, we went to Vale, we went to the Stedman clinic, we went to Minnesota, we went to the Mayo Clinic. All the best surgeons, doctors in the world could not figure out why. Believe it or not, it was the first case in American literature. It was actually the second, but the only time it had happened prior was uh upper body extremity, right? So it was the first time in American literature that this has ever happened below the waist to somebody. And that was me. And so talk about a disaster. Um, it went on for three years. I was very, very, very fortunate that I was under contract those whole three years, but I did not play a game and I missed three consecutive years of my career because of a fluke, something that was a two to three day recovery, no risks, and I couldn't play. So I had no structural damage in my knee whatsoever. No structural damage, zero, didn't blow out my knee, no ACL reconstruction, no nothing. And I missed three years of my career. The thing that's frustrating to me is that I couldn't tell my story. Right. If I told a story, the Major League Soccer gets mad because it's they're they're the people that that hired the team doctor, right? The team doctors are employed by the league and not by the team.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

You were forced to provide cut top cover to the team that hurt you.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

In some ways, yeah, right. Because if I make noise about it, if I go try to sue, for example, then I'm suing the league and not the doctor. Who's gonna win that battle? I think everybody knows, right? So I was forced at that time to just keep my mouth shut. I had the coaches that reach out to me, they're like, Court, keep your mouth shut. Um, and I missed three years of my career, and all the fans, I would read stuff on Twitter. Oh, Courtney's injury prone, injury prone this, injury prone that. Nobody knew that I had nothing structurally wrong with me, and the only reason I couldn't play was because of a mishap and a surgery. So that was that. Um, so that's the first disaster at the first at the start of my career.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Can can I interrupt? Can you drill in a little bit further on that? What's your headspace? What's your mental status going through that and not being able to respond and not being healthy enough to play?

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Yeah, so fortunately it was right smack dab in the middle of COVID. This was so important because if it wasn't, I probably would have retired then. But it was in the middle of COVID. Um and I mean in the middle, right? So if it was three years, like the major COVID year was in the middle of that, of me missing out, right? So during that time, I didn't feel like I was missing out, right? We couldn't play games, like you couldn't socialize, you couldn't go out and hang out with your friends, with your teammates. There's no social component of it. They had to go to Orlando to get their games in. So I didn't feel like I was missing out, right? Um, but I do remember before coming back from COVID, that first year, I told I told Robin Frazier, he was the coach of the time, I was like, I can't, I can't hop on these Zoom calls with the team. I was like, I don't want to talk about tactics, right? I don't want to talk about the shape that we're playing, how we're beating teams when there's no vision for me of how I can get back on the field. Like, so fortunately, he was just very accepting of it. Um, so I was removed from it. So when you think about it, it was basically like three years of vacation. Hindsight's everything. Look back, that's probably an extra three years that I had to spend with my mom, right? That I wouldn't have had prior to her passing. So, not a lot of frustration, to be honest. When I was in it, like I kind of told you, I think something that's very interesting about me is I was kind of stone cold about everything. It didn't impact me, nothing impacted me until I ruptured my Achilles. So it was just one of those things that I was just like, it's just life, and I dealt with it. So the naivety in me was actually helped me big time.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

How did it resolve? I assume your knee's doing better now.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

Yeah, good question. So the Mayo Clinic, we ended up going back for a second time and they ended up just doing an exploratory surgery. They said, Court, we have no idea what we're gonna go in there and try to do. We're just gonna go in there and laser off everything that we can find, right? Like everything, right? Because they couldn't find the leak. All right, that's what was happening for three years. Obviously, 300 cc's of fluid of leak. They couldn't find where the leak was coming from. And uh and it worked. All right, it worked. So the exploratory surgery worked. Shortly after I started playing again, it wasn't a big onset. I could just start playing again, right? Like I said, there was no rehab needed. I was already strong, I was already lifting. The only reason I couldn't play is because I had a bulging water bottle of fluid hanging out the side of my knee, right? So after they fixed it, I was back almost immediately. Yeah, and I ended up going on loan with San Antonio. San Antonio I don't know what that means. I don't yeah, yeah, most people don't. So a lot of times when you're either not playing or you're coming back from injury, you'll go on loan for another team. Okay, you can go on loan to another team in the MLS. That's rare because obviously they don't want you playing against your team. But what is common is that you would go on loan to completely another league, right? So at that time, I went on loan to the USL, right, which is the league right below Major League Soccer. And I believe I was there for two months. I think we played 12 games, and very humbly saying I balled, right? I was center back, I scored like six goals um in a very short amount of time. We only had we never lost, we didn't lose until the final four for them. So that obviously helped. And then all of a sudden, everybody's like, Where has Courtney Ford been? And at that point in time, um, Sporting KC, they they reached out, offered me a contract, um, and I signed here. So that kind of brings us to back to Kansas City, and that was kind of the end of an era there in Colorado.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Yeah, was that an exciting journey to go all the way and to be invited back to Kansas City? I assume that when you were little, Kansas City was an important spot that you potentially wanted to come to.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah, for sure, for sure. I was very happy about it. I think the process to get to that point I was a little bit bitter about. Um, so obviously I went and did extremely well in San Antonio, right? And I I pride myself on my humility now, but I really did. I went there and balled because I had a lot to prove, right? I hear all this noise from fans, injury prone this, injury prone that. I had a lot to prove, right? So I go to San Antonio and I ball out, and then I come back to Colorado, and now we're in the offseason, and without diving into too many details, they offer me senior minimum, absolute minimum that anybody could make. And I'm pissed. Yeah, I'm pissed because it wasn't my fault that I missed three years of my career, it was the team's fault, right? So the least you could do is pay me what I've already, and trust me, if you knew what I was on, all right, at least pay me the $120,000 that I was playing to play professional soccer at the time, right? Like, you know that the team doctor made a mistake. We know we messed up. The least you could do is give me what I'm on, give me a year to come back and prove that I could play. Nope. They offered me bare minimum. So at that point in time, um, I was really close to to Benny Felhaber. He we played together in Colorado and he was assistant coach for Sporting KC at the time. And I texted Benny and I was like, dude, I want to come play for sporting. And it was very, very, very, very straightforward. He's like, How much do you want? What would you need to come here? Peter Vermiz called me, put an offer together, and that was the end of that. So I was ecstatic, ecstatic to come back and to come home. But it had to happen the way it did because my mom passed away December 12th of 2021, and I signed for sporting in January of 2022. Wow. So the full circle with that was obviously for good reasons. My mom was deathly terrified of ever coming back to Kansas City. So she was never gonna do it. She was never gonna do it. So my mom didn't want me playing for sporting KC. She didn't want to have to because she would have followed me anywhere, right? Um, so it was very interesting that that offer came right after she passed away.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Um, I I somewhat picked up somewhere that was it your mother that said soccer's not your purpose? Mm-hmm. Yep, my biological mom. How how is it that you're a a professional soccer player and your mother who's made so much sacrifice to get you to play soccer or to give you the opportunities to play soccer, right? comes back and tells you. That software's not your purpose. Is that because she saw more in you? Or is she?

SPEAKER_02 44:04

I don't know. It's a question I'd love to ask her. Um, like really, I really would really like to ask her that question. Because it was one of those things that was just she knew in her heart, and she said it multiple times. I was growing up. Obviously, I didn't have any plan B. Right. I was bullied in elementary school for saying that I wanted to play pro soccer. They're like, you're never going pro. Like, I remember from second grade on, and every through every stage of my life, my mom would tell me, It's not your purpose. I know you're gonna achieve it, but it's not your purpose, not your purpose. So clearly she knew what the bigger vision for me was. And obviously, now I know what that purpose was, but very humbling for somebody that sacrifices everything to help their kid achieve that dream, and then to tell them, You do know this is not your purpose, right? So um, I know that doesn't necessarily answer your question, but I would love to ask her that.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

Yeah. So let's let's finish out your your pro career, and I really want to explore some of your new projects and what you're working on in Kansas City. So you've now made it to Kansas City, you're you're playing soccer here. Um, what's that feel like to be back in Kansas City? And how does your career end out?

SPEAKER_02 45:13

Yeah, it's it's amazing being back here in KC. I think my wife was the one that was a little hesitant, but um, she loves it too. We love it here. It's nice to have family, friends that we grew up with, you know, some roots, and it's a little bit slower pace of life. Um, we've done a lot of work on ourselves individually. Um, we're very growth mindset individuals, just trying to become better people, and it's nice to have a slower-paced place like Kansas to do so compared to like being in LA or something where it's a lot, a lot of distraction. Um, so yeah, it was awesome being able to come back here. We, my wife and I, we met when I was still in Denver, and she'll tell the story till the day she dies. But I did accidentally lie to her, and I told her that um don't worry, I'm for sure signing again for the Colorado Rapids, right? Um and she gives she gives me crap for it, and to be fair, I thought I was because that was the only contract offer I had. Um, but then obviously Sporting KC comes in, they make the offer. So um, right after we started dating, I obviously moved to Kansas and I'm playing here. So we actually did long distance um at the start of my career for about six to eight months. Um and then I ended up playing, you know, for sporting for three years. Got news one day that I needed to medically retire, needed a total knee replacement. That was complete news to me. Um, looking back, huge blessing, huge blessing in disguise. Um, I think everybody knew that I was too stubborn to give it up on my own. So I was gonna have to be forced to quit. But ultimately, like if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't open my new indoor facility, wouldn't open the academy, I wouldn't be here today. So we are so beyond blessed to be back here in Kansas City with a community um that is so into soccer, and they and obviously having the friends and family here, it's it's huge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

So I'm obviously very grateful because my daughter trains at your facility, and um you know, that's how we were initially introduced. How did you move from the professional pitch into okay, now I want a training coach and and walk us through your current journey on the uh the business?

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Yeah, so I would probably say when I first came here, I started passing out business cards for private training. Um, most people don't know this, but like, I mean, now I recognize it, but what what an easy life it is to be a pro athlete, right? Like you go to training for a few hours a day, and then you got the rest of the day to do whatever you want. Now you can choose to take care of your body, do things that help, or you can play video games, go do be a good family family member, whatever. But um, the biggest thing that I noticed was you had all this time after you're done training, right? Training's typically at 10 a.m. You finish up around noon, you maybe do the team lift. By the time you get home, it's two o'clock. What do you do for the rest of the day? No kids, right? Not married yet. What do you do? Um, so I started passing out business cards for just private training on the side. And uh I built a clientele kind of on accident, and then it made the transition very smooth when I had to retire. Um, everybody knows this, but I never wanted to be a coach ever, ever, ever, ever. I didn't even really like the sport of soccer, to be honest. I was good at it, but I never watched it on TV, didn't track it, didn't watch film, nothing. So very interesting that I'm now doing the job that I said that I would never do, right? But it kind of all happened like seamlessly together. And then after I got the news that I had to retire, I was like, well, I don't really have another option. I have my business degree from University of Denver, I might as well make a business of it.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

Yeah. So uh was that a tough leap? Did you uh have fear or anxiety with I'm gonna actually start a true business and rent a space and build out a gym? And and that's it's it's not a simple lift.

SPEAKER_02 49:01

No. Um I think there's kind of three components to it, if I can remember all of them. One failure was never has never ever ever ever been an option, right? So I I never worried about it. Um, it was just I just went and did it, right? I'm a doer, just don't doesn't care what needs to be done, just go do it. So that was one component of it. Two, I attribute a lot of it to Peter Vermese. I know people have different opinions of him, but he ended up paying me out my contract. I retired, I found out that I needed a total knee replacement in March. I made it public that I was retiring in April, and he continued to pay me my contract throughout that year. I don't think that there's a lot of coaches or clubs that would do that. So him paying me out my contract while I was hurt allowed me about eight months of still getting paid to go and start this, which is something that other people do not have when they retire, right? As soon as January hits, there's no paycheck. All right, and they're scrambling to try to figure out what they're gonna do next. So very blessed to have had that support from Peter, right? So that's another component, and then I do think that there is a component that I have to be honest about, is like when I'm looking at my wife and our potential family and paying the bills and getting ready for that January date, right? Um, I was thinking about everything. I downloaded Uber, I never went and did it, but I remember being in that stage of life where it's saying, I will grind and do whatever I have to do to make sure that I can provide for my family. And all glory to God, it never came to that, right? But during that transition moment, it was one of those things where it's like I wasn't gonna allow failure at all. And if it meant two or three jobs while I got it up and running, I was I was willing to do it. Um, but I was just very fortunate that it didn't come to that.

SPEAKER_01 50:55

Let's talk about faith for a second, because I know this is really important to you. Yep. Your new uh startup, your new venture is called Faith First Academy. Faith First Soccer Academy. How does faith fit into this journey? And how does faith feed your current project?

SPEAKER_02 51:16

Yes, looking back, faith is probably the only thing that mattered in my whole life and this whole journey. Um you can remove religion from it. Obviously, my mom and I we grew up going to church, didn't mean anything to me. I couldn't tell you a single thing I learned in church growing up. Um, so it's pretty much non-existent. My faith was non-existent until that Achilles rupture, you know, going into my second year with sporting. That's when kind of everything finally hit me, everything, like everything all at once. I was like, why does this stuff keep happening to me, man? And I I think at that point that was probably my rock bottom, right? Are you angry? Oh yeah, oh yeah, extremely angry, extremely angry at God or whoever our creator was at the time. Um, everything that I had been through in my life. Obviously, at that point in time, both of my my parents, I obviously consider my second mom, Josephine Walker, who died of liver cancer to be my second mom. Both of them are passed away at that point. Both my brothers were killed in a car accident, had the fluke injury, missing that much longer, my or three years of my career, and then this, right? And I was just pissed off at the world. I was just mad, I was angry. Um, and I'll never forget, I was just sitting there bawling, and I'm not a big crier. I was sitting there bawling at dinner with my wife, her mom, and then my godmother Sarah, who who I say is my third mom, you know. And I made some super ignorant comment about, you know, when I forgive God. Like, you know, they're telling me, like, Court, maybe you should dive back into start going to church, maybe dive into the gospel, maybe try something else. What's what you're doing ain't working. And I made some ignorant comment about saying, no, like when I forgive God, I'll do that. Like, so um, that was the the changing point for everything for me because I think I was, I don't know, 26 at that time, 27 years old, 26 or 27. So I'm a full-blown adult. And up to that point, I had not changed anything in my life. Um, and then it was just sort of rock bottom for me, and then I just really dove in to the Bible. I just wanted to understand the Old Testament, how God could be so cruel and put people through very difficult things, right? Even though you're a good people, put you through trauma, and trust me, everything that I've been through in my life, there's millions of people out there that got go through much more, right? So it was very hard for me to comprehend how a loving God could do that to people. So I really needed to dive into the Old Testament and learned, learn about God and how He could do it. And then once I read the Old Testament, I was like, okay, this is starting to make sense, right? Like, you do this, God will kill you for it. Who did it? And so I was like, started to ask questions. I still wasn't faithful, I still wasn't religious, but at least I had some understanding of why all of this bad stuff could happen to me, right? That was the start of my faith journey. That was the start of me working on myself. Um, and then the rest was history from that point.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Yeah. And then how does that feed into the the soccer academy? Yes, so it's a good question.

SPEAKER_02 54:28

So I think the thing that I hated about church for the longest time is all churches for the longest time, is that I never believed in giving money to the church ever. I was like, they're just taking money from people. And the other thing I was like, I see the people that are going to church on Sunday, but I see how you're what you're doing on Monday, right? And it just it's so it's so contradicting, right? And so for the longest time I had this really bad taste in my mouth about faith, religion. And then the pastor at Life Church, Craig Grashell, obviously he's the he's the pastor at a huge Christian church, and he started off one of my first days of going to church saying that we are faithful, not religious. And I was like, whoa, like this is one of the biggest countries in or biggest churches in the country. And you're gonna stand up there and say you're not religious, like let me hear more. Like, let me hear more. And I think at that time I I distinguished the difference between faith and religion. And I think, you know, he spent a lot of the sermon saying that religion just continues to divide, divide everybody. There's no unity. We find everything in the world to just continue to divide ourselves, and faith is the opposite, right? It's sort of bringing in everybody. And I said, you know what? I can get behind that. I can get behind that. I said, everybody goes through different trauma, they have different cultural backgrounds, they have different religions, right? Their upbringing is different. Why can't we find a way to bring us all together instead of just finding multiple ways to divide all of us? So that's why it's called Faith First Soccer Academy and not Christian Soccer Academy or Catholic Soccer Academy. Like it's it's meant to welcome everybody, and I think that's a big part of my journey is my mom, all our whole family at that point that were teachers, they were all about bringing everybody together, right? That's why they're high school teachers, right? So being able to sort of continue that mission that they had through the academy, even though we're prioritizing faith, um, is a huge blessing, and obviously that is my purpose, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:37

Yeah. So uh if you're just introducing somebody to the concept of of the academy, what what is it?

SPEAKER_02 56:44

Yes, so Faith First Soccer Academy is basically uh an all-all-inclusive resort, you could even call it, right? It's a one-stop shop that if you want to play the sport at the next level, anything you could possibly need is there. And I do mean anything, right? So it's like the soccer fields, the weight rooms, the fitness component, there's the dining hall, there's the the academic space, the tutoring, the sports psych help, right? Becky, um Becky Haynes with Sporting KC, our sports psychologist, she sees a lot of our athletes. Um, the nutritionist, the there's barber, right? Barber shop, um, the recovery room, the player's lounge, the pool, the so when you when you really think about hey, what what would you really need to have one place where you could accomplish all your dreams with the sport? This is Faith for Soccer Academy, right? Currently, right now, if you need help on nutrition, you got to go find it elsewhere. If you need extra training, you gotta go elsewhere. If you need help on the fitness, you definitely gotta go to a different coach, right? So we're trying to create one space that offers all of it, but making sure that the foundation of what we're doing is good human beings, right? Um, character development and all of that, right? We want the foundation to be strong like that, um, so that every everything after that could just take care of itself. Yeah, very cool.

SPEAKER_01 58:04

Where are you in the in the the process? It sounds like it's still getting off the ground. You're you're developing, or where are you with the the application?

SPEAKER_02 58:13

Yes, so we already have the building, renovations are pretty much done. We only have to add a couple restrooms. Um, all the programs are set, right? So our faith-based program, the academics, the tutoring partnership that we have, everything is set. Now it's just about getting everything actually started. So we want to align it with the actual school year itself. Academics are a huge component of it. Um, so August is when our real start date is focused on. We already have everything kind of set up. Obviously, a big component is raising the money. Uh, we have a huge scholarship program where we want to scholarship kids that can't afford it, inner city kids, um, and training for the kids. Obviously, this pay-to-play system is very unique to the United States. Okay. You know, it it's free to play soccer everywhere else in the world. We are the only place that, of course, uses it as an opportunity to monetize and make money off the kids, right? So we are trying to nip that in the butt and change it and really fundraise to be able to scholarship the kids and pay for stuff. So obviously the fundraising component is huge. And this is in Kansas City. Yes. Okay, very cool.

SPEAKER_01 59:20

Um what other aspects of you mentioned slightly mental health or mental fitness or sports psychology. Yeah. Um when did you start to realize that your success as a professional soccer player was also mental? Were you the best player on the team?

SPEAKER_02 59:44

Never. Never. I was never the best player on any team. No, I was always the second, the third. And maybe that was probably a little bit of the motivation, right? Um I think that there should probably be studies done on this, but I think that a huge factor to my success is that I was so naive, and I do think that I got that from my mom. I was literally so naive to failure that it was literally impossible. It wasn't even possible because we were both so naive to thinking that that's not okay, so let's just go be victorious in whatever we do, right? And I do think that there's a big mental health component to that, and I think that's something that's interesting about my career is I had an extreme ability, and we talked about the manipulative concept, right? But I had this extreme ability that as soon as I stepped onto the field, becoming a completely different human being, it gives me chills thinking about it now, but becoming an absolute animal that was unrecognizable, and to be that fierce of a competitor is needed if you're gonna ever play professional sports. You have to have the ability. And something that I do want to talk to my kids about is that as soon as I ruptured my Achilles, my second year was sporting, and I started to work on myself and I started to become a better human being, and I started to ask my wife, where do I need to grow and accountability? The more I worked on myself, the harder it became to flip that switch on the soccer field. I could not find that fierce animal that made my career so successful so easily, right? It was very difficult. So the better person that I became off the field actually made it harder on the field to tap into that and become a good performer. And I realized at that point, I was like, well, yeah, that's because my foundation was the all the wrong reasons, right? It was the trauma, it was my naivety, it was everything that I've been through, it was my ego, it was my pride, it was my wanting to win. Well, I said, well, what if my kids, what if their foundation can be their faith? What if their foundation can be being a supportive good human being? And what if that's the foundation? So no matter what they go through in their career, the soccer component is consistent, right? For me, it was the the opposite, right? So talk about mental fitness, mental health. It was probably the lack thereof, right? When I when I ignored it, I was better. But when I started working on it, I was worse. And I think that that is very contradictory or contrary to what most people would say because mental fitness is a huge component of it. Um, a huge component of it. Now, fortunately, I was I was going to therapy for a lot of my career, and I had that relationship there when I needed it. I probably went to therapy for a good three or four years before I ever really needed it. But I had that relationship that when my mom passed away and and my second mom passed away, and all these things were going on, I had that relationship to go back to to make sure that I was strong.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:07

Do you think so? What I heard there was that your initial foundation was was from a very dark and negative place, yeah, and that that was the fuel for for some of your on on the pitch success. And that you have now successfully proven with Path to Pro and your other programs with with Faith First, that you're able to still create the foundation, but from a very positive perspective, and then instill that aggressiveness on the pitch without the trauma.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:40

Yes, I think that's the goal, and I think that's the fun component of to what I'm doing. I'll be very, very, very transparent. I haven't had one case of success.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:51

Not one. I think it's very interesting, very interesting that the more we choose to work on being good people, my kids can't tap into that. They can't tap into that aggressiveness, they can't find that fl that switch, right? And then I have a couple of kids that are not working on the being a good person component. They can tap into it easy. Yeah. Right. So I think that that's something that's a huge challenge of mine is being able to find the balance between the two. But I want to be very transparent and aware of the things that made me a professional soccer player are also the things that made me a bad person.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:31

When but you have a very successful Path to Pro program. Yeah. Where those those students are going to college and they're playing, right? I mean, you have all the jerseys on the on the wall. Yeah. Uh that's success.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:43

Yeah, it's interesting you say that. And I think, you know, I give you one example. I think Natalie would be totally fine with us talking about her today. Um, Natalie, she Natalie Scobie, she's been with us the longest, right? She just left for Clemson in January. So she was our first Path the Pro player to actually leave, go a semester early and be there. And I can't wait till she comes back to speak to all the players this spring because she's going through it. And she's going through it for the same things that I would harp on all the players: loud, intensity, talking, right? All the stuff that has nothing to do with soccer. So talk about being an animal, right? You gotta be loud, you have to be vocal, you have to be intense, you have to boss people around. Those are all the same things that she's getting hounded for at the collegiate level, right? So sometimes I think that my players are like, man, court is too much, man. Coach court is too much, right? But it's because they've never been in that setting, they've not been in a collegiate setting, they've not been in a professional setting, right? So sometimes I feel like because they can't comprehend it, they don't realize the importance of it. And Natalie is the first example of a player that I mean has a full ride to play at Clemson. And it's struggling because of the inability to tap into that fierceness, the animal, the light switch component of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:08

Fascinating. Well, I'd love an update. Yeah, me too. So we'll do the follow. Where can people find you online? Where can they find about your your uh academy?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

Yeah, um, faith first talkacademy.org. Um, that's where a lot of our content is. We have a lot of stuff coming up about our upcoming Gala event in June. So we're really excited about that. Um other than that, just social media. We're just on Instagram. Got a lot of things going right now. We got a lot of things going on behind the scenes, so um not overly into the marketing component or anything like that, but just a lot of behind the scenes ops.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:43

Yeah, very cool. Is there anything else that you want to talk about regarding your hidden foundations for success that we've not touched on so far? I don't think so. We talked about a lot. Yeah, we did. I appreciate that. Yeah, appreciate that. Well, um, we're gonna try something new, okay, if that's okay with you. Okay. Um, I brought my daughter Elizabeth today. I like it. And we want to set up Eli's corner. It's her nickname is Eli. We like strong nicknames. Um, we want to set up Eli's corner, and Eli has a couple of questions for you. So I'm gonna give up my chair. I like it. Let's bring Eli in to quiz you. Okay. Yeah, I'm all right. So I'm gonna we're gonna take a break and switch out. We're gonna get her mic'd up here. So just a second.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:24

Hello, I'm Elizabeth Schoenrack. Um, I go by Eli, and this is I have a couple questions for Courtney today. So, my favorite one, I'm gonna start with, okay? Okay. So, who was your favorite play growing up?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:41

Wow, you know what? This is such a good question, Eli, and I love that you asked that. You were you're gonna believe me if I tell you? Favorite player was nobody. Really? I never, ever, ever, ever, ever had a flavor favorite player, never had somebody I looked up to, and I refused to wear somebody else's name on my back. You shouldn't you should want to ask me why.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:05

Why?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:06

Why? Because I always wanted to be the best version of my own self, right? No idols, right? I do think it's okay to have kind of people that you kind of want to mimic your game off of, but I do think it was one of the reasons that I was successful, is because I was always focused on being the best me instead of somebody else. So I do like that question.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:24

Cool, definitely. Um, when did in your soccer career did you realize that professional, like playing professional was your goal?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:37

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:39

Like, how old were you when you realized that going pro was an opportunity?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:47

An opportunity versus dream, probably very two different things. I think that I I started telling people I wanted to go pro at like five or six years old. So earliest I can remember, I went to Northview Middle School in Oletha. We'd play soccer at recess. It was then, it was then. Um the real the first time that I realized that I was probably actually going to go pro was 16 years old when I got the ability to start training with the professional team during the day when I was still in high school.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:18

Wow, yeah. Um, was there anybody in your life that really encouraged you to continue on with your soccer career?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:28

Or yes, I would say my biological mom. Yeah, and I would say that my second mom, both of them, even though that they had passed, they were huge motivations even after that. So um, very interesting thing. So my second mom passed away first. Her name was Josephine Walkter. She was given three to six months to live, and she told me that she was not gonna quit fighting her battle until I signed pro. So she passed away literally three weeks after I signed professionally, right? And then something similar happened with my biological mom, right? But they always believed in me. And I realized like if you were given three to six months to live and you could continue to fight for five years, I'm pretty sure I can do whatever it takes on and off the field, fitness, diet, nutrition, mental fitness, you name it. I'm pretty sure I can do everything else to continue to achieve my goals as well. So even when they were alive and when they weren't alive, they were huge motivation factors for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:31

Yeah. So you said that she was only given six months to live, and she d went and lived five more years after. That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:44

That's yeah, it's pretty crazy. Both of them actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:47

Really?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:48

Both, both, yes. So my and that's kind of unheard of with stage four liver cancer, but she was given three to six months and she lived for four years. And my mom was given three to six months and she lived for four and a half years.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:04

Um, so you know how I have the Courtney Secrets document? Where did you learn all those tips and tricks?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:12

Great question. Um, coaching. I did not know how to do anything that I've coached you how to do while I was playing, even up to the last season of my career. Okay, so the one thing that I I give you kids a hard time on is when we talk about opportunity and information, you guys have way more opportunity and information than we all had, right? First of all, you can ask anybody in the league. The majority of us have never had private training. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. Well, importantly, nobody's ever broken down the fundamentals and mechanics, right, to trapping or passing a ball. They just tell you keep your foot flat, you know what I mean? So it's a good question. And I actually learned as I went a lot of studies that you look up on how to teach different things, but um doing 12 sessions a day, right, make you learn it, and then you figure out how to how to teach it to the kids.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:07

Yeah. So um, last one. This one's the very most important one. So I know you said that you really didn't have a fair player growing up. But now, Messi or Ronaldo?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:23

Messi.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:24

Why?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:27

I've always thought that he was a little bit more humble. Um, just from an appearance, I don't know them, right? I don't know them personally. Like I know that sometimes never, ever, ever, ever judge a book by its cover. But what it appeared as is that Ronaldo was a little bit more ego-centered, right, about himself, about his appearance, and Messi was just kind of the quiet guy that went out and grinded. Now, that's just a judgmental thought, right? I don't actually know them, but that's why I've always been Team Messi. And the more that I've sort of worked on myself and trying to grow even as a human being, the more that I tend to be fans of people that have a lot of humility.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:06

So what about you?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:08

I'm Messi as well. I like that. Yeah. I like that. Um now that like you retired and stuff, do you still go to the sporting games?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:17

Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:18

No?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:19

No. Oh I do not go maybe, maybe occasionally, like, I think we maybe been to like one in the past two years, right? But typically it's when like me and some of my old teammates, me, Johnny Russell, Tim Millia, we've we're texting and we all know that we're going to the game together. Um, down to the field club, maybe like that. But um when it's your job for so long, typically you're not overall it thrilled to go back into that environment.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:47

Yeah, because I was gonna say you could go give him a high five, you know, when you're down there.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:53

I would just do it in the locker room with him.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:55

Yeah. Thank you for watching. One thing you can do is only like, subscribe, and comment.