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John Strong (in white) got his start at Laker Broadcasting while a 17-year-old high schooler in Lake Oswego.

(Andrea J. Wright/2003)

Full disclosure:

is my friend and former colleague. I was best man at his wedding. When I throw a barbecue, he's my first call. Also, technically, for about 20 minutes one afternoon I served as his "agent," helping negotiate his first contract as the play-by-play voice of the MLS

.

Strong called his final broadcast as the voice of the Timbers on Wednesday. On Monday,

will announce that Strong has been hired as the national network's lead Major League Soccer voice. He'll call play-by-play on the weekly national MLS game, beginning July 6 (Seattle at Vancouver). And while the network probably wanted to break the news itself, I thought you deserved to know first.

You've been here for the guy. You get to claim him. For maybe a little while longer, you know Strong better than people in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. And so when you tune in and see him making the national call, maybe you'll do it with a little extra pride. I know I will.

Strong's been calling events for years, but the one that sticks with me is his radio play-by-play call of a Timbers road game in July 2009. My wife and I listened in the car as we drove. I've never much believed in telepathy. But I listened as Strong sewed together the action, describing the flow of the game, the movement of the ball and the players on both sides, using only the inflection of his voice and his shoulder-deep vocabulary. I could see everything that he saw -- BAM! -- telepathy. My wife and I turned to each other, stunned at how gifted he was. We laughed because we both had tears in our eyes.

Strong moved from calling Timbers games on radio to doing them on television. His

against Sporting Kansas City in July 2011 earned MLS's Broadcast Call of the Year. A few months ago, he was named Oregon Sportscaster of the Year for his work in 2012. And on Friday, Strong's 28th birthday, he did an interview with Sports Illustrated for a piece that will be published Monday as the NBC announcement is made official.

Strong's mother, Julie said, "One of the things I love most about my kid is his 'never-in-a-million-years-would-this-happen' humility. He has such a sense of wonder about him. He finds all of this happening so fast absurd."

Bob Costas was also 28 when NBC hired him. Al Michaels, formerly the Cincinnati Reds play-by-play voice, was 28 years old when NBC hired him to cover the 1972 Winter Olympics. In preparation for his debut, the network sent Strong a cache of Michaels' play-by-play calls. And while Strong will tell you he has soccer play-by-play influences (particularly BBC's John Motson, the voice on the FIFA video games), he's said numerous times that his first and biggest broadcast influence was former Trail Blazers play-by-play voice Bill Schonely, whom he listened to growing up.

"He and his friends in grade school would be in the driveway shooting baskets, or they'd do WWF wrestling, and John would be doing the play-by-play," Julie Strong said. "He was always a little bit nerdy in the broadcasting sense."

Strong has laser-like focus professionally. His success is not accidental. When Strong sees a path to something he wants, he travels it with alacrity. At Lake Oswego High School, he and a friend, Erick Olson, doggedly lobbied the principal to allow them to start the school's first broadcasting program. The principal later confessed to Strong's parents that he only approved the Internet-based broadcast program because he thought it would never get off the ground. Laker Broadcasting continues today, has resources that now include multiple television cameras and has produced other young professional broadcasters.

Later, in college at the University of Oregon, Strong happened upon a note taped to the broadcast department's office door. The Ducks had launched a women's lacrosse team, and the coach was hoping someone might want to call the play-by-play so the parents of players from out of state could listen. Strong peeled the note off and became their voice. He subsequently became the voice of the Ducks' softball, soccer and hockey programs.

In the lead-up to his college graduation in June 2007, Strong was offered a job by Portland's KXL radio. The station expected the new hire would take couple of weeks off after school, but Strong reported two days before graduation, working an uncovered shift covering the Blazers predraft workouts. He drove back to Eugene afterward.

In early 2011, Strong asked if I'd help him negotiate his first contract with the Timbers. We had zero leverage. The Timbers were prepared to make Strong the television play-by-play voice for their first MLS season. It was his dream job, as Strong had once been a member of the Timbers Army. He was 25, and had seven fill-in Timbers broadcasts to his name. His eyes danced at the opportunity, and the organization saw it.

We started the negotiation asking for a 50 percent per-game raise over what the Timbers were offering.

We ended up 20 minutes later with two free Timbers tickets for Strong's family.

I resigned as his agent in the parking lot.

Mike Golub, the Timbers' chief operating officer said that day, "We're going to give him an opportunity to grow."

Golub was right. Strong has grown from the voice of the Timbers into the voice of all of American soccer.

I've watched in the last few years as Strong has refined himself as a broadcaster, and as a man. He's a terrific son to his mom, and a loving brother to his sister Mary, 24. His guilty pleasure is going to big Denver Broncos games with his father, Dave. And when Strong fell in love, it was with Nicole Wilcox, a former all-conference soccer player at Washington State. They got married in January 2012, and soon after bought a house a few blocks from the same elementary school he once attended.

"He lives right down the street from where he first called all those games in the driveway," his mother said.

There's been a lot of talk over the last few years about the lack of American play-by-play voices in soccer. In 2010, there was a public revolt when ESPN had all-British broadcasters calling the World Cup games. The allegory goes that Americans can't call soccer properly because it's not an American sport. Hiring Strong is a bold and brilliant move by NBC Sports. And he serves not only as a reminder of what hard work and talent can do, but as an example of how, in America, a kid can still ride a meteor to his dream.

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