How Did I Get Here? - FBM Founder Dan's Story (Part 1)

(Editor's Note: We're looking for your "How Did I Get Here?" story to win some pretty great prizes from us and the American Outlaws. Please click here to see them and read the details of the contest. Submissions must be in by June 4th.

For "inspiration," and what we're kinda looking for, read the Free Beer Movement's "Founder" Dan and his tale.

I don't like to often pop up on the Free Beer Movement site, personally. I like to do that with my "voice," but the FBM is not about me personally, but about an idea and how that idea can build American soccer. This will probably be one of the few times "Dan" actually shows up on the site. But I did think it was useful to share my "How Did I Get Here?" story with those who stop by the site to maybe understand how and why this Movement came to be.)

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I have never been particularly talented when it came to soccer. I played sparingly at forward in high school, my shinning moment when I scored two goals in one game (my hat trick incorrectly ruled offside... I have tape to prove it!) and promptly got benched for the following game for reasons unknown to me. Occasionally I played goalie when our starting keeper would run into something and get knocked unconscious, something that happened more often that one would assume. I still play that position with great mediocrity. Despite a handful of college intramural titles under my belt, the pitch and I have an unremarkable history.

I have always been a realist and when it comes to acknowledging my complete lack of skill when a ball was at my feet. I knew that my love affair with the sport of soccer would take place outside the white lines of the field (and frankly most of my playing career was there on the bench anyways!).

My first major soccer memory was, unfortunately, not the 1994 World Cup in the United States. I always regret the fact that I was too young and my family to distant from soccer to have been able to attend the event. It was the following contest, across the ocean, when I happened to be in France during the tournament by complete happenstance. I had been playing youth soccer for years, but always because it was clear that my sports sense was even worse in all the other "major" sports. Despite this I was hardly connecting to the sport itself.

Returning to the U.S. after seeing what a nation brought alive by the World Cup looked like I started watching the remaining tournament games including Dennis Bergkamp's magical goal against Argentina in the quarterfinals and the Zidane and company's triumph over Brazil as the people of France filled the street I had vacated only weeks earlier.

The global connection I now had with soccer now filled my head. Fox Sports World (ahhh... memories) was now showing EPL games and I fell for Liverpool with my kindrid #17 spirit Paul Ince and wunderkid Michael Owen and I was glued to the TV for anything soccer related.

But even still something was missing. Playing soccer was fun, really fun, but I knew it would never take me back to the place where I had experienced the true passion and excitement of soccer for the first time. It was like an addiction... I had had a great high and was trying to get back to that place without success.

In college I met like-minded addicts. In high school I played with soccer players, but not fans. Here I played with fans. In September of 2005 several of my friends, my dad and I packed up a van and drive to Columbus, Ohio for a World Cup Qualifier against Mexico. This was one of the famed showdowns in Columbus that would become the graveyard for many of Mexican qualifying hopes. The result and the experience was epic. The U.S. left with another 2-0 win and had booked their passage to Germany 2006.

I finally got that high back that I had been craving since France. The game, the crowd, the brotherhood of U.S. soccer fans that I never knew. It was awesome to experience such an electric atmosphere in the United States. That night we painted the town red, white, and blue. I was probably drunker than I had ever been before and since. I drank with Marcelo Balboa. 'Nuf said.

To Be Continued....

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