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Hello everyone, Hector here… "I played terrible." If you have a kid that plays soccer, you've heard that sentence in the car. Head down, arms crossed, looking out the window. And you're sitting there with your hands on the steering wheel thinking…what do I say right now? Sometimes they really did have a bad game. Sometimes they didn't, and they just believe they did. And here's the thing…in that moment, it doesn't matter which one it is. I'm not a parent. But in 8 years of MA

Hello everyone, Hector here… Today I turn 30. Yup…30. Three-zero. I still consider myself a kid, so here we are… Every year on my birthday, I do the same thing: I sit down, I get quiet, and I reflect. Some of you have been on this list long enough to remember the "Lessons at 27" email. This one is a bit bigger, because I'm not just looking back at one year…I'm looking back at a whole decade. And what a decade it was. I stopped playing soccer. MAGIS was born. We went from 0 pl

Hello everyone, Hector here… I was 14 years old and we were about to play the semifinal of the high school tournament in Caracas. Now, this was not just any semifinal. This was the derby. The two biggest schools in the city. Everybody talked about this game for weeks…parents, teachers, the kids that didn't even play soccer. Everybody. And we didn't play well. I didn't play well. Nothing dramatic. I didn't get injured, the other team wasn't from another planet…I just wasn't in

Hello everyone, Hector here… My dad never once told me what he was thinking during those months. I was at the University of Memphis. Freshman year, I was a starter…8 goals, All-Conference, Freshman Athlete of the University…you name it. And then the next season came, and I was on the bench. Watching. Warming up, stretching, checking the coach's face every time he looked down the line…and not getting called. My parents were 2,000+ miles away in Caracas. So all they had was a p

Hello everyone, Hector here… This past Saturday, I was finally able to watch The Odyssey with my girlfriend, and it instantly became one of my favorite movies… For those who don't know, The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, a great warrior who spends 10 years trying to get back home after the Trojan War. Every single time he gets close to home…something else goes wrong. Monsters. Storms. Gods working against him. A crew that makes the worst decisions at the worst possible mom

Hello everyone, Hector here… Yup…that’s me and my dad in the picture. That is what every weekend looked like after finding out I made the B team when I was 7 years old… The new season is here. Rosters are out, teams are set…and that means that this week, somewhere in Memphis, a kid will start training with the team he didn’t want to make. Maybe that kid is in your house. Maybe that kid is you… This message is for you, the kid who has been dropped to the 2nd or 3rd team… I kno

Hello everyone, Hector here… This post isn't really about soccer… or maybe it is. A few nights ago, Venezuela was struck by two major earthquakes within 30 seconds of each other, one measuring 7.1 and the other 7.5. Because they weren't very deep beneath the surface, the shaking was even more intense, and it lasted over a minute. That might not sound like much, but when the ground is moving beneath you, a minute feels like an eternity. I'm not entirely sure why I felt compell