Speaker
Patrick McGraw
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Patrick McGraw was first called a homophobic slur in 5th grade due to how he walked and talked, setting the stage for decades of avoiding team sports.
Even when kicking a soccer ball against a wall alone, Patrick flinched when the ball rebounded back at him — revealing his deep-seated fear of sports.
After a spectacular goal at a Portland Timbers match, Patrick initiated a high five with a stranger — the first time in his life he'd ever done so — which he took as a sign he was ready to join a team.
Patrick McGraw didn't attempt to join a team sport until his 40s, when he discovered soccer through watching European matches at a Portland café.
Patrick didn't just lack coordination — he flinched at his own rebounds. Practicing alone in a parking garage before dawn, he was still fighting the body-memory of years of being a target. The garage sessions were the anxious prelude to something transformative.
After whiffing kicks, getting winded, and barely surviving his first scrimmage, Patrick biked home ecstatic. His captain had simply said, 'Great job today. We'll see you next week.' It was the first time someone in a sports context had genuinely welcomed him, and the weight of what he'd been denied hit him only later.
After the gut-punch semifinal loss, Monique's team came back the next year and won the state championship — playing their way, not the old coach's way. Monique shook the ex-coach's hand anyway, getting a backhanded 'that was an okay game' in return.
For the 2022 World Cup final, Franco found a bar full of first- and second-generation Argentine Americans, all wearing the blue and white, drinking mate. Standing there, he understood: his culture wasn't something to escape. It was something to represent.
Growing up, Tierna's club coach ran proper film sessions — a dad with a camcorder, footage of Barcelona, homework on Iniesta and Busquets. Those sessions taught her that reading space and the weight of a pass aren't extras: they're the entire game. That detail obsession is what carries you to a World Cup.
Women's sports have historically been one of the safest spaces for queer people, and Tierna Davidson has lived that. Soccer gave her community, acceptance, and ultimately her wife. She argues the sport's ethos of freedom and self-expression makes this feel almost inevitable.
Monique's coach had a zero-tolerance policy for getting knocked around: commit a foul in the first five minutes or sit out the game. It turned a fast, technically gifted player into a yellow-card machine with the nickname 'Mellow Yellow' — and it nearly broke her love of the game.
Franco promised himself he'd stay calm at a work watch-party for the Croatia semifinal. He managed one goal. By the third, he was jumping and screaming 'Gol!' while his American colleagues laughed and celebrated with him. The fever had him.
Franco moved from Buenos Aires to Chicago partly to escape the suffocating emotional grip of World Cup soccer. Then Argentina lost to Saudi Arabia in the group stage, five friends blamed him personally, and his resolve started to crack.
As a kid, Tierna Davidson stood shyly at Stanford stadium fences waiting for autographs from players like Kelly O'Hara and Christen Press. Then she became the one signing shirts. Then she lined up alongside those same players at a World Cup. The circle closed in Paris in 2019 with two assists against Chile.
Down to the final minutes of the state semifinal, Monique earned a penalty kick against her former coach's team — the same coach who had benched and belittled her all season. She buried it. Then her team lost on the next play. She didn't care.
As an effeminate kid in the 70s and 80s, Patrick McGraw was chased out of sports by bullies — literally sprayed with a fire extinguisher by older boys. Decades later, he joined an inclusive soccer league in Portland and, on his very first scrimmage, finally felt he belonged.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Society & Culture 50%
- Sports 50%
Connections
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