Yes, I basically grew up in Dakar. My mom was a teacher at a missionary school and later went back as a full-time missionary. I was three when I first went over. I lived in Dakar and in Europe until my teens, then came back to the states for high school.

I love Senegal and would love to go back to visit… but it’s not quite so easy now that I have to pay for it myself!

I grew up playing soccer on the streets and in sandlots in Dakar. Just pick-up games with whoever showed up and with whatever “ball” we could find. Sometimes it was a soccer ball, but other times it was a basketball, a tennis ball, a tin can, whatever.

That early experience is one of the things that influenced me the most about my attitudes toward soccer because soccer was a way to communicate: get a group of kids who wanted to play and no one worried about the color of skins or what language you knew or didn’t know — we were just having fun!