I got my first one when I was 22, using money I got from my parents as a graduation present. On my shoulder, I put everyone’s initials and a rope encircling a compass to show how spread out we are, with an anchor in the middle and my parents’ initials in it to show my parents that they are our anchor, also a nod to the Navy.

A few months later, I got four different flowers from my mom’s garden back home, a hummingbird, and butterfly tattooed on my other shoulder. That’s for my mom. She was really important to my development with how she raised me. Like I said, family is everything.

My third tattoo has a little more to it. I have a dog on the outside of my right leg kind of looking up at the moon with a mountain in the backdrop. The dog because my family has always had dogs but the outdoors because I spend a lot of my free time pursuing outdoor activities (as does the rest of my family) and as a nod to represent the Colorado Rapids, the team that drafted me, where I got my first chance to be a professional.