Back on July 3, Deuce Hillerich’s response to a front-page Courier-Journal story on The Coopers, Louisville City FC’s largest supporters group, was one of disdain.
“Must be summer, no real sports to cover! #IWantMyFootball,” Hillerich said at the time.
When he next logged into Twitter, the Louisvillian had multiple messages in response from LouCity fans encouraging him to give their kind of football a try. Defender Tarek Morad also reached out, tweeting, “I’d love to leave you some tickets to come to one of our next home games.”
“People could take that as, ‘Oh, this guy has no respect for soccer,'” Morad said this week of the tweet. “But it turned out he’d never been to a game before. Instead of reacting a different way, I’m trying to grow the sport, obviously. I think the best response was to give him tickets and let him experience it himself.”
The day came Saturday when Hillerich and his family attended LouCity’s game against Orlando City B, checking in as a few of the 8,351 at Slugger Field for the Saturday night match. Louisville gave up a pair of stoppage time goals and fell late, but Hillerich left saying he and his family were the club’s newest five fans.
“I get a little bit of gratification knowing I helped someone have a good experience with his family — and obviously a new experience,” said Morad, a California native who’s in his second year with LouCity.
“He’d never been to a soccer game before. Just the ability to be able to turn someone who wasn’t a soccer fan into a soccer fan feels pretty good. It goes a long way toward trying to make people interested not just in our community, but with soccer in general.”
Morad is one of a handful of LouCity players active on social media — and plenty in person around town.
Morad, Kenny Doublette and Mark-Anthony Kaye posed with a fan Monday at Steel City Pops, the new shop on Bardstown Road. Last week, Morad also appeared at WFPK’s Waterfront Wednesday and the next night participated with roommate Enrique Montano in a live, game show-styled taping of The Coopers’ podcast.
“I think it’s especially important to be really interactive with the fans in Louisville since the team’s only in its second year here,” Morad said. “…Yeah, we’re professional athletes, but at the end of the day we’re just regular people with jobs.
“If it means giving back to this community, I’m sure everyone on this team would be more than willing to do so.”
