This week’s Dynamo 365 Member of the Match is Lori Brans, a woman whose love for the game of soccer came only after her children became obsessed with the sport. Bans is a self-described soccer mom, who took it upon herself to make sure that her kids had the best possible access to the sport they loved.
“I became a soccer fan when my kids played youth soccer. They played all through high school. My daughter played one semester in college. I became basically the soccer mom. That's what I am. I was head of the high school booster club,” Brans said. “I basically ran the soccer program at the high school where my kids went to school. Back in that day, the schools didn't all have soccer teams with paid professional coaches like they all have now. It was an extracurricular thing. I'm the one who, with the school’s permission, hired the coach and such.”
However, as her kids grew up and started moving out of the house, Brans needed to find a new group of soccer players to follow. Enter the Houston Dynamo. When she first moved to Houston, her son suggested she check out the new downtown soccer stadium. She was hooked very quickly.
“I didn't even know about the Dynamo until my son started telling me about it,” Brans said. “The year that the stadium opened, by then my husband and I were like 'let's check this out for something for us to do.' So, we got a mini season membership and then after that, the next season, we had the full membership and have had it through today."
For Brans, her love for the Dynamo came down to the players themselves. The performance on the field is important, of course, but not as much as the players as human beings.
"For me, as I said, I'm a soccer mom,” Bans said. “So, they became my boys. I like to get to know the players off the field. I like when they play well, but I like to get to know the players off field."
Without her Dynamo 365 Membership, Bans would not have access to a lot of the opportunities to get to know the players off the field that she has attended over the years. While the COVID-19 pandemic put a pause on a lot of those activities, she has a few experiences that she will never forget.
"They were a blast. Some of the different crazy things that we did,” Bans said. “At one of the events, they had all kinds of crazy activities and one of them was you could test drive an Audi. I didn't want to test drive the car, but we were hanging out with Giles (Barnes) and Giles was like 'come on, I'll drive.' So, me and my friend jumped in with Giles. When we got down to the end and went to turn around, Brad Davis was like 'let's drag race to the other end.' We were drag racing down that side road with a cop at the end of it watching it all. It was things like that. You don't do that every day."
