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Sitting at a kitchen table in his family's home in Highland Village last spring, with two pocket beagles milling around his feet, Paxton Pomykal looked at his phone and shook his head.

"It's ridiculous," he said. "My group messages are just blowing up over prom stuff."

That's a hint at the age of Pomykal, who despite being a professional soccer player is still very much a teenager. You'll get that as you look around his bedroom, where soccer memorabilia intermingles with a bookshelf lined with Harry Potter books, and when talking about favorite movies.

Pomykal's favorite is Kung Fu Panda.

"I've seen it at least 25 to 30 times," he said. "I can probably quote every line."

Pomykal (pronounced paw-mi-call) is 17 now, and nearly a year has passed since he signed a contract with FC Dallas as a homegrown player. The midfielder, who helped FC Dallas claim under-16 and under-18 national championships and was a member of the U.S. under-18 national team, made his professional debut in March.

Pomykal's soccer life has already taken him to places such as England, France, Germany, Italy, Panama and Spain, and the amount of travel was one reason Pomykal attended traditional high school for only a year-and-a-half. He still has many friends at Flower Mound Marcus, but he takes high school classes online to allow time for daily practices at the FC Dallas facility in Frisco.

Pomykal is 5-7 and 150 pounds, making him significantly younger and smaller than most of his professional teammates. He said the older guys gave him some grief early on, but it was good-natured.

"Now I'm just one of the guys, you know?" Pomykal said. "Sometimes people try to remind me that I'm 17, but at the professional level, it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, you're fighting for a spot whether you're 33 or 17."

And at the end of the day, things aren't that much different now than they were before Pomykal became a professional. He still lives at the house that his parents -- Preston and Holley Pomykal -- had built right before he was born. He still plays pool soccer in the backyard with his younger brother, Porter, who is in the FC Dallas youth system and begins high school in the fall. He still stays in touch with his older brother, Pierce, a soccer player at Columbia.

A copy photo of Paxton Pomykal in his bedroom at his home in Highland Village, Texas, photographed on Tuesday, March 28, 2017. (Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News) (Courtesy photo / Staff Photographer)

The Pomykal home is clearly that of a soccer family. A ball can be found in nearly every room, on a shelf, in a closet, or tucked under an end table between couches. Preston Pomykal, who played soccer at the University of North Texas, pointed to the tattered Venetian blinds upstairs and then nodded toward a nearby soccer ball.

All three of the Pomykal brothers loved soccer from an early age, their dad said, but there was something "different" about Paxton.

"There were lots of people along the way who would make comments to me that 'Paxton has it,'" he said. "I thought, 'What do you mean he has it?'"

The proud dad now knows. So does FC Dallas coach Oscar Pareja, who said Pomykal's intelligence and coachability are helping him develop.

"What he brings right now is the energy of a young player who wants to be successful," Pareja said. "At the same time, he brings a lot of talent."

He also brings a lot of knowledge of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and other things that make him, by his own description, "kind of a geek." He has big ambitions, including one day singing the "Star-Spangled Banner" with teammates at the World Cup, but for now, he's happy to enjoy the ride.

Pomykal trains for several hours in the morning with FC Dallas and then comes home to his family and the same friends he's had for years. The friends he'll hang out with at the movies, high school football games, maybe even the batting cages.

He's a pro athlete, but also a teenager.

"Yeah," he said with a laugh. "I'm not going to try to be somebody I'm not."

Paxton Pomykal

Age: 17

Hometown: Highland Village

Family: Parents Preston and Holley Pomykal, older brother Pierce (a soccer player at Columbia University) and younger brother Porter (a ninth grader this fall). The family has two pocket beagles with soccer-influenced names. Livi (short for Liverpool) is 3 years old, Adi (short for Adidas) is 1.

Notable: Paxton played on his first soccer team when he was 4 years old. He played basketball and flag football, too, but switched to soccer full time at about 9 years old. "I was always better at soccer than the other sports," he said.

Super Fan

Pomykal is a big fan of Arsenal FC in England, and he watches a lot of English Premier League and UEFA Champions League matches. But he said he's a big fan of all sports.

"I'm a huge football fan, a big Cowboys fan. I like watching March Madness, any playoffs, World Series, NBA playoffs, everything."

Pingpong, anyone?

Paxton Pomykal loves to play pingpong, but the competition at the table in the family home has dried up in recent months. Paxton takes the blame for that.

"It used to be very competitive until I got too good," he said.

His dad nodded in agreement.

"He will not lose," he said.

Hometown, homegrown

FC Dallas has no shortage of familiar faces on its team. There are currently six players who hail from the Dallas-Fort Worth area on the team's roster, all of whom are homegrown talent:

More on Paxton Pomykal

VIDEO: Pomykal on what it means to be a pro athlete at 17 years old

PHOTOS: Here's what you will find in home of FC Dallas midfielder

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