LA Galaxy executive shows how youth sports empowers you throughout life

USA Today

5 days ago

It's not exactly a linear path to the LA Galaxy, Tom Braun will tell you.
Play baseball as a kid in Houston. Get drafted by the Oakland Athletics as a pitcher. Pursue an undergraduate education and a Big East baseball career at Georgetown. Get into banking.
He only moved west when his wife, Raquel, landed a job as a lawyer with Fox Sports. Tom got his MBA at the University of Southern California.
Then, about a decade before he would become president of business operations and chief operating officer for one of Major League Soccer's flagship franchises in 2023, he took an unpaid internship at Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG).
It led to a job in data analytics for the Galaxy and NHL's Los Angeles Kings, which AEG owns, and set him along his MLS journey.
He laughs when he is asked if he imagined it would happen this way.
'You can have hope and dreams,' he tells USA TODAY Sports, 'that you can become fortunate to work for such a great company and such a great team and you work really hard, and you hope that that pans out. Luckily, I've been around really great people and I'm gonna take advantage of it.'
The Galaxy have won a league-high six MLS Cup trophies, including one last season. Along the way, they averaged a near-capacity crowd at Dignity Health Sports Park on the campus of California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson and have offered a family-friendly extravaganza.
Braun, 42, has been a force behind the Galaxy's youth development programs. The Galaxy hold close to 200 classes a week. According to the team, its clinics will host more than 1,500 boys and girls this year, many of whom are new to soccer or are accessing structured play for the first time.
A father of two boys (Jack, 5, and James, 2) who coaches his oldest son in the AYSO, Braun spoke with us about how his own experiences as an athlete, leader and dad can help other young athletes and their parents.
His story shows how far you can go when a love for sports stirs a spirit within you that goes beyond just being a professional athlete.
(Questions and responses are edited for length and clarity.)
Just let them play: 'They're going to find their path'
Braun started out in baseball because, like with many of us, it was the sport his dad knew best. He could play it year-round in Texas, and he learned to put everything he had into it.
Realizing what it all meant, and where it might lead, though, came much later.
USA TODAY: How about some general tips and observations you have for parents about getting their kids into sports and keeping them fun, not getting them so competitive so early?
Tom Braun: I'm young into it and fortunately, my kids are really interested in playing sports. I think often parents think that they're gonna be a professional athlete at 5 or 6 years old and really, you just let 'em have fun. They're gonna find their path, they're gonna find what they're interested in, but I think even more at an early age, parents are looking for something to do. They're looking for an activity for their kids to do, where they can be outside or be active and sports, specifically soccer in our Galaxy Juniors program, gives parents an opportunity to put their kids in sports that they don't know if they're going to like or not like, but it's an easy sport to understand, and you can see they like it. But I wouldn't push them too hard. Let 'em enjoy it and pick what interests them as they get older. I don't think anybody can decide at 6 years old if they're gonna be a professional athlete.
USAT: The most successful athletes will tell you that as kids, even in the Little League World Series, it's supposed to be just about fun as well. It's not a scouting opportunity.
TB: I had a pretty good career in baseball, getting to play in college, but I actually did not start to realize I was good at baseball until I was about a junior in high school. So it takes some time to kind of develop and figure out what you're good at and what you're interested in.
Our sports experiences, whenever they end, can help carry us throughout our lives
Going into his senior year at Kingwood (Texas) High, Braun says, he threw hard enough that it became apparent pro baseball might be an option.
The A's picked him in the 30th round of the 2001 Major League Baseball draft. He opted to pursue a business degree at Georgetown, giving him a background for what he would become.
He realizes now, though, that what he accomplished on the field was at the center of that transformation, too.
'When I graduated, I worked for an investment bank for about six years,' he says. 'I ended up wanting to pursue a different passion, a passion more in sports. That's kind of where my interest lies.'
USAT: Do you find just competing at the collegiate level has helped you in the real world?
TB: Not a lot of people, I think, realize that being a college baseball player (is) a full-time job, being a college athlete is a full-time job, and going to school and really caring about your academics is a full-time job. I do think it makes a big difference for someone's work ethic and their passion to be able to accomplish those things and working as a team, I think it gives you a lot of characteristics and qualities that do make you better in the workforce, or to make you a better person. So, yeah, I think it's important. It also shows, I think, how you prioritize things in your life.
USAT: Do you have a strategy in terms of building the right environment, interactions between parents and coaches, to kind of set the standard and expectations for the parents?
TB: I think it depends on the age. If they're 2 years old, of course, the child will want to hold Mom and Dad's hand and have Mom and Dad on the field. But once they start to be about 4, we start to separate it out a little bit, where the parents aren't on the field, and the kids start to build that confidence to do things independently. And I think as it progresses, there's a different type of expectation as a kid gets older that the coach is caring for them in the right way, and that the parents are respecting the coach's ability to coach the child. We spend a lot of time making sure that the kids are cared for in the right way.
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Sports can have unexpected benefits for kids
Galaxy Juniors starts as early as 18 months old, and it runs through ages 6-7. As they get older, kids can graduate to MLS GO and try out for MLS NEXT, as they can in many other parts of the country.
Braun remembers when he was young, it was hard to find soccer on television, and it wasn't always available to play on a team. It has exploded in popularity over MLS's 30 years of existence.
'The more accessible and inclusive it is for families, the more they fall in love with it,' he says.
Since his sons were born, his perspective on what the sport can mean to a kid has dramatically changed.
USAT: Could you just talk about how your youth development and training program works?
TB: I'll give you a very specific, personal example of just my family and what sports meant to my now soon-to-be 6-year-old. So when my 6-year-old was 18-19 months old, he was having a hard time walking. For some reason, he just wasn't comfortable walking. And at that age, most kids are walking. We decided to try to figure out why, and eventually he started to walk. And right when he started to walk at 19 or 20 months, we put him into a Galaxy Juniors program, and we saw him go from having a hard time walking, period, to listening to coaches and following directions and moving in a way that he wasn't used to moving. He went from not walking to running and to being coordinated. And I think some of that development really had a huge impact on him and his own personal growth and his own confidence at that age. So personally, like even putting them in sports when they're that young, I think, makes a really big difference in just their confidence and their growth as a little kid.
We have two facilities. One's called LA Galaxy Soccer Center. It's a 75,000-square-foot indoor facility that has five futsal and small-sided soccer courts, in Torrance, that I think, on a weekly basis, we get over 5,000 kids that go in and out of that facility just to play soccer. We also have an outdoor facility here on our campus, at Dignity Health Sports Park, called Galaxy Park, where we have a number of futsal and small-sized fields as well, where it's open to the public. And kids just come and play soccer, and they take clinics with us. They do pickup games. So it's a safe space for kids to come.
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Your own professional development, and your relationship with your spouse, goes hand in hand with your kids' athletic prosperity
A former colleague once told me she would wake up at 5 a.m. to have coffee and sit in the quiet of the morning to center herself before she gave her young kids her undivided attention.
Just recently, a family friend of ours who is raising four active kids went back to work in an office setting after about 10 years away from it. As her children have become more self-sufficient, her new career has rejuvenated her.
The process works similarly with our kids and our sports: We need to take care of ourselves as we take care of them.
USAT: I know you and your wife both work, so how have you managed to juggle everything with the sports?
TB: Raquel was a lawyer at Fox Sports, working on World Cups and NFL and Major League Baseball. She transitioned to (doing) talent and business development for EA Sports, the video game company, and now she's pursuing her own venture where she's a consultant. She started it with a partner. It's called Mulier Fortis, which has a heavy focus on women's sports, and the growth of women's sports.
My wife and I share the responsibilities, as we should. I'm a very fortunate husband. She loves it as do my kids. And she works equally as hard as I do, if not more than I do. You have to have an understanding wife and understanding family and you gotta take advantage of those moments when you're not working to spend time with your kids. It's important to make sure you're balancing your home life and your work life.
USAT: Do you have like a typical day in your life? Can you kind of detail that, or is every day completely different for you?
TB: Well, I'm very much a routine guy, but every day, when I get to the office, is a little bit different. But I usually wake up between 4 and 4:30 every morning. I'll go for a jog or I'll work out. That's really my hour, hour and a half that I get to spend on my own before my kids start to wake up, usually about 6 or 6:30 my kids are getting up. I'm getting them ready for school, oftentimes taking them to school, getting their lunches prepared. And then I'm in the office, probably by 8:30 every day. And then once I get to the office, it really depends on the day, what meetings we have set up, what are the priorities? Oftentimes I'm engaging with my executive leadership team to understand what the priorities are for the day or for the week. I spend quite a bit of time understanding with my head coach (Greg Vanney) and my general manager (Will Kuntz), who I get to work with every day, what their priorities are during the week, leading up to what could be a game on the weekend. So at work, it's a little scattered but at home, it's pretty regimented. I get home about 6 every day, it's quality time with the family before bath time and bedtime, and then I usually crash myself.
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons' baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.
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