Shaking hands with President Obama
I returned to work for the Colorado Rapids before the 2010 season, and what a season it was. We won the first trophy in club history by winning MLS Cup 2010, defeating my former team, FC Dallas, in the championship game in Toronto in Canada.
The following year, as tradition has it for champions in U.S. leagues, we were invited to the White House. But for me the visit was even more special, as I helped write President Barack Obama's speech to the team.
A few weeks before our visit, a communications rep for the White House contacted me asking me for some insight into the 2010 team in order to work on the speech. I threw all kinds of facts out there, trying to give something on every player, as well as fun nuggets that were only been known to those of us on the inside. Twice he called to read the speech back to me to make sure everything was accurate.
Everything was going great. He couldn't call out every player, but he'd included enough of the guys and some of the fun stories. However on the last draft he sent me, he also included a line that wouldn't make the team sound too good.
I had told him that after winning the Conference Championship to advance to MLS Cup, one of the guys took out a bottle of champaign and yelled out that 'if we win it all, we get two bottles.' It was my way of telling him that the team wasn't celebrating merely advancing - they expected to make it to the final. The misinterpretation lead to the draft of the speech saying something about how the team didn't make much money and couldn't afford more champaign.
I emailed and called him before we left for Washington D.C. to try to get that line out of the speech, but I never heard back. So on that Monday, as President Obama began his speech, saying most everything I had already read, I was quietly praying they had taken out the line from the end (especially as team owner, Stan Kroenke, had joined us). I was the only one that could hear my sigh of relief when the line was never uttered.
Before the speech, we had a chance to tour the White House, me and the coaching staff even got to sit at the table in the State Dining Room. Afterwards the team ran a clinic for children of military families on the South Lawn. I can't imagine there have been many people juggling a soccer ball out there in a suit.
Even more fun, the White House used the photo of the President shaking hands with me on their website.
