Soccer moms for the win

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The term “soccer mom” has gotten a bad rap over the years. It conjures up the image of an orange-slice-(and over)-bearing woman whose life revolves around sunblock, folding chairs and cheering very loudly for her soccer-playing son or daughter. But what about real soccer moms?

In honor of Mother’s Day, we asked a handful of Charlotte FC players and head coach Dean Smith for their perspectives on their mothers to find out what their moms did to help blaze their trails to Major League Soccer.

“My mom was the ultimate soccer mom,” said midfielder Brandt Bronico. “I genuinely wouldn’t be where I am without her.”

He and his brother Brady, two years younger, both played soccer growing up in High Point. He said their mom, Alison, drove them to soccer tournaments in a Ford Excursion, with TV screens that popped up in the back to watch when they weren’t “kicking and screaming.” During games, she was the one making most of the noise.

“She was always the loudest one on the sideline, cheering for us or pushing for us, individually and the team, of course,” said Bronico, smiling. “My mom would always say, ‘Don’t let ‘em push you around out there,’ trying to get me going.”

He said his teammates used to kid him, saying, “Don’t let them push you around, Brandt,” in their best falsetto voices. Brandt said his dad, Jim, liked to sit higher up in the stands, where it was a little quieter. But Bronico never let it bother him.

“She really encouraged me to be myself,” he said. “I feel like I always got my drive, my intensity, my tenacity from her.”

Both of his parents were college athletes when they met at Lafayette College in Eastern Pennsylvania. His father played football. His mother was a standout in both field hockey and lacrosse. When she graduated, she was sixth on the all-time scoring list despite missing her junior season with a knee injury. Now she’s in the Lafayette College Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

“She always encouraged us to do whatever we wanted to do, which was nice,” Bronico said. “But when I really took to soccer, she pushed me and helped me get to that next level through encouragement, love, support. I'm always appreciative of that. She would always say, ‘Just go play your game. Go and be a little Tasmanian devil.’”

Speaking of Tasmania, and not just because of the Looney Tunes reference, but the island 150 miles off the southern coast of Australia, Archie Goodwin left his mom, Kellie, a half a world away to come to Charlotte from Newcastle, Australia. But he talks to her every day.

The east coast of Australia is 14 hours ahead of Charlotte, so Goodwin calls her first thing in the morning. If it’s 8 a.m. Eastern, it’s 10 p.m. in Newcastle. She will stay up past her bedtime, if need be, to talk to her firstborn of three soccer-playing sons.

“She’s always in bed, and Dad is snoring next to her,” he said.

Bill is retired now, but used to travel regularly for his job as a coal miner. Kellie Goodwin left her job as a nurse to stay home — figuratively speaking, anyway. She used to have to drive Archie, Jake and Darcy to Sydney, a two-hour trip each way, for games with the Newcastle Jets academy. Now, at least, Jake has his license and can drive himself.

“She's done it for all of us,” Goodwin said. “We couldn't have got to where we got to without her, her sacrifice and all the love she put to us, and can't thank her enough for it.”

When Goodwin agreed to terms with Charlotte last August, he had three days before he was to travel here. She drove to Sydney to meet him on his layover from Adelaide.

“I got them to book me to go from Adelaide to Sydney, and I could stay overnight in Sydney,” Goodwin said. “Mom mum drove up that night just to see me. Yeah, there were a few tears.”

There were also encouraging words.

“Just go kill it, do your best, keep smiling, be positive,” he said.

Charlotte FC coach Dean Smith comes by outspokenness honestly, even about officiating, apparently. A TV reporter from Birmingham, England, once bumped into his mother, Hilary, when he was head coach at his hometown Aston Villa and interviewed her on the street of Great Barr, in northwest Birmingham.

Just after she introduced herself as Hilary Smith, the mother of manager Dean Smith, and before she got to saying how proud she was of her son managing in the English Championship League with his childhood team, she injected: “It definitely wasn’t a red card.”

She was referencing a controversy in a game between Aston Villa and Leeds two days earlier, with her son at the center.

Aston Villa took exception when Leeds scored a goal while one of their players was injured, even though Aston Villa had kicked the ball out of bounds when one of their own players had been injured earlier. In the altercation that followed, Anwar El Ghazi was shown a red card, which was later rescinded for simulation. Leeds manager Marcela Bielsa apparently agreed with Smith (and his mother) because he ordered his team to let Aston Villa score, and the game ended in a 1-1 tie.

“She speaks out about most things,” Smith said at his Thursday press conference, smiling. “That’s why I keep her away from things like this.”

On a more serious note about her earlier in the week, Smith said his mom has always been his biggest supporter. His dad did not drive, so when he and his brother were growing up, their mother drove them to all of their games.

“All my games, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, was my mom taking me and my mates around,” he said. “I wouldn't be standing here now and had the career in football if it wasn't for my mom.”

She wasn’t one to sit quietly by during his games.

“I never used to like Brussels sprouts,” he said. “If ever I was having a bad game, she'd shout on, ‘You'll get Brussels sprouts if you don't pick it up!’”

Her reverse psychology with Brussels sprouts worked in more ways than one.

“I like them now, to be fair,” he said.

Pep Biel is an unabashed mama’s boy, make no mistake. “She was and is everything for me,” he says.

Catalina wasn’t all that into soccer before her second child, and first son, came along. But she faked it until she made it, apparently. Biel said it’s been a running joke since he was a young boy that her favorite team was Deportivo de La Coruna in their native Spain. Truly, though, the only teams she really cared about were whoever her son was playing for, and for her now 29-year-old son, it’s been quite a few. She’s followed him to every stadium in every country, he says, including Denmark, Greece and the United States.

Through his travels, Biel said, she’s never met a stranger, even when she doesn’t speak the language. Biel said the day he signed his contract with Olympiacos in Greece, he left his mom in the club offices to get his medical exams. He came back two or three hours later to his mom, hugging one of the women who worked for the team.

“The girl started to say to me (in English), ‘Please tell me that your mom is living with you,’” Biel said. “‘I want her here all year.’ I said to my mom, ‘How do you connect like this? You don't speak English. She said, ‘I don't know.’ So this is my mom.”

The same is true for people she’s come across in Charlotte, Biel said. She and his father stayed for a month to get him settled after his transfer to Charlotte two years ago. They’ve made a big impression in the 10 or so games she’s been to watching Charlotte FC.

“The vibe she has, how she looks at life, is something different,” Biel said. “And I'm very happy to be like her. You can ask Kerwin (Vargas’) family, or even Wilf (Zaha), she's different. She’s so friendly, so warm, so happy, so extroverted.”

Charlotte FC rookie defender Will Cleary said his mother, Nancy, was a dedicated soccer mom, whether it came to bringing Gatorade, snacks and orange slices or delivering medical advice. She helped him work through Osgood-Schlatter knee pain through his teenage years.

“She would search on the internet, getting all these remedies, trying to figure out ways to help me,” Cleary said.

This was all while juggling a career as an admissions director at his school, The Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Conn., where his dad Joe also teaches math.

“It was a constant sacrifice for me and my sister,” said Cleary. “My mom didn’t have a lot of time to do anything else because she was always looking after us.”

Coach Dean Smith and his captain, Ashley Westwood, had a little role reversal on Wednesday, when Smith was invited to play in the pro-am ahead of the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow Club and invited Ashley Westwood to be his caddie.

“He gave me some good lines (on greens),” Smith said. “He picked a couple of wrong clubs at times, but I also called for a couple of wrong clubs at times as well. But to be honest, my wife said every time she looked at us, we were laughing, so it shows we had a good time.”

Smith said he missed out on seeing Rory McIlroy but got a chance to speak with English pro Tommy Fleetwood. He played his first nine holes with Patrick Cantlay and the back nine with Denny McCarthy. The format they played was a scramble, with their group using the best ball from their tee shots, then finishing out the holes individually. Smith said they used three of his drives, and he birdied the 15th hole.

“It was good to be there,” Smith said. “There were a lot of Charlotte FC shirts around and a lot of kids as well. All sports from Charlotte gave a good showing. That’s what we should be doing to help the community.”

When/Where: 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Bank of America Stadium

How to watch: Apple TV. Find information about how to subscribe for the season here.

How to listen: WFNZ 92.7 in English, WOLS 106.1 in Spanish.

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Carroll Walton is a longtime baseball writer with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, now in her fifth season covering Charlotte FC. She would love to hear from you. E-mail her with questions, suggestions, story ideas and comments!