Garth Lagerwey was a 5-year-old with a dream.
He wanted to play pro football.
Upon hearing his son’s aspirations, Wally Lagerwey made him an offer. Garth could play football in high school, but until then, he could only play other sports. In the early 1980s, when Garth was about 10, his dad introduced him to soccer as the Lagerweys and several Elmhurst families helped form Team Elmhurst — a competitive travel team — along with the community’s first AYSO team.
To say the youngster enjoyed soccer would be an understatement. He ate the game up. He developed a passion for it uncommon in American kids and quickly changed his dream job from the gridiron to the soccer pitch. He wanted to be a professional soccer player, and that is exactly what he did.
Now, after a five-year stint in Major League Soccer, Garth Lagerwey is living his new dream job. He’s general manager and senior vice president of soccer operations for Real Salt Lake, which last month became MLS Cup Champions.
The championship was an unimaginable end for a Salt Lake team that finished the regular season with a 11-12-7 record, and an even more improbable journey for Lagerwey.
“It’s been an amazing experience, one that I’m lucky to be a part of,” he said. “(The team) took a regular season record that maybe wasn’t as good as it could have been ... and when the pressure was on, the guys really stepped up and delivered their best performances of the year.”
Contact Marc Zarefsky at mzarefsky@mysuburbanlife.com.
