The Art
of Athletics.

A grandfather's hand.
A street in Athens.

My grandfather used to walk me through Athens just to play. We'd stop along the way. Neighbors washing their cars, shopkeepers opening for the day. Everyone wanted to know where we were going.

I didn't know it then, but those walks taught me more about the world than any pitch ever could. He had a way of making every person feel like they mattered. Every conversation on the street was its own small moment.

"Soccer was never just the game. It was every person we met getting there."

He is still with me. Every country I've played in, every stranger who became a friend, every moment that reminded me why I started — I feel him in all of it. He is part of this journey. He always will be.

Athens, Greece

The game took me
everywhere.

I played at the University of Rhode Island. In 2020 I was drafted by the New York Red Bulls. Then Charleston, South Carolina with the Battery. Then Finland with FC Haka. Then Greece, Egaleo FC, which happened to be in the same city my grandfather used to walk me as a kid.

I thought Greece would feel like coming home. It didn't. That was one of the harder lessons the game gave me. Sometimes the place that should mean the most doesn't give you what you expected.

But walking those same streets, in that same city, I felt my grandfather with me. Every new country, every new culture, every handshake with a stranger who became a friend — I kept thinking about that walk. About his hand. About how he stopped to talk to everyone on the way.

Then Knoxville, Tennessee. One Knoxville SC. A city I didn't plan on. A city that became home. I'm grateful for every single stop. The game gave me the world.

A canvas for
the game.

Derma started in Athens. Not what it is today. It started as a conversation about compression and performance apparel. I had partners. I had a direction. Then things changed, as they do.

I realized what I actually wanted was something different. I wanted to use the game as a canvas. Uniforms were the way in — not because they are the most obvious thing, but because there is something about a kit that carries meaning. Every team deserves to feel like something when they put one on.

The moment that confirmed it wasn't a meeting or a business conversation. It was seeing someone proud to wear something I designed. That was the whole thing right there.

The game is
still beautiful.

Now I coach kids in Knoxville. Watching them — the way they take the game seriously even when it's just a pickup game in the park — I remembered something about myself.

I was always like that. Even in Greece, even in casual games on cracked concrete, I was serious. Not rigid. Just genuine. I always believed the game mattered. I always knew I wanted to play professionally. To me, beauty and sport were never two different things.

Coaching brought me back to the beginning. Back to that kid in Athens who didn't have a word for what he felt but knew it mattered. Watching a child run toward a ball with everything they have — that's the whole thing. That's the art of athletics.

Derma is that belief, made wearable. It's somewhere between nostalgia and art. Between who you were as a kid chasing a ball through the neighborhood and who you are now. That feeling when you pull something on and it actually means something.

I'm still chasing that feeling. That's why Derma exists.