When you watch a professional sports team practice, you can’t help but notice the flashy stars and the blistering shots; the fancy dribbles and sprawling saves.



But there also are the quiet players, ones making 40-yard runs and effortless tackles. You never really notice them unless they make a mistake. If they simply do their job 10 times out of 10, you might forget they were even there because they don’t toot their own horn, or express a measure of bravado in an interview, or sport a brightly colored Mohawk. The quiet ones simply choose to blend in and do the work.



I had taken my 5-year-old son, Iggy, out to see the Colorado Rapids train one April morning in 2016. The team was wrapping up with a seven-on-seven scrimmage on a shortened field when a gleaming red-white-and-blue MLS official soccer ball blasted over the fence and beyond the berm upon which all the collected fans stand. My son dutifully retrieved it, and then the two of us walked toward the...