He's the biggest Wisconsin sports star you probably don't know

He’s the face of his franchise and a star in his league.

He’s a promoter. A dreamer. An entrepreneur. He's an inspiration, or at least that's his goal.

Yet despite his talents and efforts in Milwaukee for nearly a decade, Ian Bennett remains an unknown to the average Wisconsin sports fan.

He plays indoor soccer for the Milwaukee Wave, a team that draws a fraction of the audience and attention that Wisconsin’s other pro and college teams do, and makes about as much in a season as Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo does in three minutes on the court.

But Bennett is an entertainer in a sport that needs entertainment. He has a big heart, a broad smile and boundless energy. And although it took him some time to find Wisconsin — Bennett is a Canadian of Caribbean descent — he loves it here.

“It’s not a shot at the big-name athletes, the big guys. … But I tell people, when can you talk to, like, Aaron Rodgers?” Bennett said. “It’s hard. They’re just so busy. They get mobbed.

“But a guy like myself and other guys on the team, you can reach out to me. We can Instagram, Twitter. We can answer a little easier.

“So that’s what I love. Your kid can contact me, or find me some way or send the Wave a letter and I can respond and really work with the kid and give him that insight. … We don’t think anything of it, but these kids are like, that’s awesome.”

A sport that has struggled

The Wave was born in 1984 — a few months after Bennett — and is the longest continuously operating team in professional indoor soccer in the country

That’s not to say the franchise or the sport has been a model of stability.

Over the Wave’s 33-plus years, its league affiliation has been a bowl of alphabet soup, from AISA to NPSL to MISL to XSL to MISL to the current MASL – the Major Arena Soccer League. To get a sense of the precariousness, the MASL website lists 21 teams, four each in four divisions and five under the category “Inactive.”

Local businessman Mike Zimmerman, the developer of the Rock Sports Complex and the proposed Ballpark Commons in Franklin, has owned the team since 2014.

The Wave’s attendance through six home games this season at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena has averaged a league-leading 3,788, according to the MASL. The average for all teams is 2,330.

Turmoil is a constant in arena soccer — teams come and go; players move frequently — and that has contributed to the game struggling to maintain rivalries and athletes’ connections to fans.

But in his nine seasons in Milwaukee, Bennett has become the antithesis. He is solidly entrenched.

Bennett's daunting autograph line is a mix of die-hard adult fans and eager kids who recognize him from camps and appearances. That popularity — albeit on a relatively small stage — has even been enough to allow Bennett to launch his own lifestyle clothing line.

“They love that energy about him,” said Wave coach Giuliano Oliveiro, who also was a teammate of Bennett’s from 2009-’14. “He’s great in the community. Just constantly on the go, always around, his face is always seen.”

After every home game, well-wishers line up to see Bennett, some bearing gifts but most just wanting an autograph, photo or handshake. Bennett greets each one with a hearty thank-you for attending.

'My second home'

Bennett is the oldest son of athletically inclined immigrants who met in Toronto and raised their three boys in nearby Hamilton, Ontario.

His mother, Arlene, was a field hockey player from Trinidad & Tobago; his father, Richard, a soccer player from Jamaica.

“I could skate, I could play hockey,” Bennett said. “I had a bunch of buddies — we were tight-knit, so we played a bunch of sports.”

Soccer, though, grabbed young Ian most tightly.

Ian was 4 when he started playing. Not long after, he was diagnosed with asthma after his mother saw him gasping while on a field trip.

“You’re not supposed to be able to run, you’re not supposed to be able to play soccer, you’re not supposed to be on the track team,” he said. “But my parents said, ‘Yeah, you’ve got asthma, we’ll figure it out. We’ll go to the doctor, figure out what kind of meds we need to do, what we need to do in order for you to play, but we’re not letting you have an excuse, saying you’ve got asthma.’ ”

After high school, Bennett played soccer for his hometown Hamilton Thunder and then went to Marian University, a small Catholic school in Indianapolis. A speedy midfielder listed generously at 5-foot-9, Bennett became the Knights’ all-time scoring leader.

While playing lower-division pro soccer in Charleston, S.C., Bennett discovered the indoor game as off-season employment. Soon after joining the Chicago Storm in 2007, he realized his plan was backward.

“Obviously, outdoor (soccer) – it’s what the world plays,” Bennett said. “Indoor is a mix of everything. It’s got a little of every sport – basketball, hockey, soccer. You can’t help but to fall in love with the game.

“I’m a high-energy guy. I like to enjoy myself, I like to laugh. It’s fast-paced. From a playing standpoint it fills all my needs as a player. I love it.”

When the Storm went dormant after the 2010 season, longtime Wave coach Keith Tozer reached out to Bennett, the Storm’s leading scorer, and asked him to come to Milwaukee.

“To be honest, I only knew where Chicago and Minnesota were,” said Bennett. “I didn’t know there was something in between or anything.”

Needless to say, “I never honestly thought this was going to be my second home,” he said. “But obviously it is, and I’ve loved it ever since.”

Looking to the future

Bennett and his wife, Tori, have daughters who are 10 and 7. He works extensively with kids in the Wave’s camps and in his coaching job at SC Waukesha and partners in a performance training program for young athletes in any sport.

Now 34, he finds himself looking beyond his playing days. Bennett’s degree is in sports management, but connecting with kids has made him think more about being a teacher or counselor.

Bennett uses a story familiar to any youth sports parent as a reference point to describe the sort of influence he likes to have.

“In soccer, if you’ve got the kid that’s playing with flowers," Bennett said, "I always think: Wow, what if that was my kid? I’m going to give up on the kid?

“I’m going to show you, that kid that was picking flowers this year, next year he might be picking less. (Then in) another year he might be into (the game) more. I’m all about that, giving the kid a chance.

“In today’s society and coaching, everyone’s so quick to be, ‘Oh, he doesn’t have it. So let’s focus on the kids that have it.’ No. … Maybe he just needs a little channeling here or there and he can get it. I’m all about that. I get it. And that’s when I see it, that’s what fulfills me.”

A shot at business

Working in youth soccer helped Bennett realize a childhood dream of his own, one that might have seemed unlikely given the economic realities of his sport.

With the initial help of a parent of one of Bennett’s youth soccer players, he launched his own brand— ib26, his initials plus his uniform number — last August. He is hands-on with design and material selection.

“I wasn’t thinking, ‘I want to become a professional,’ ” Bennett said of his teen years. “I was thinking, ‘If I become a professional and then I can be pretty good, then this will open some more doors.’ ”

Oliviero has helped inspire him in business as on the soccer field, Bennett said, and then he turned to Zimmerman, the Wave’s owner, with countless questions.

“He’s made some good money, man, let’s be real,” Bennett said of Zimmerman, who launched, built and sold healthcare companies before venturing into sports properties. “I like that.”

Shirts, hats and socks with Bennett’s ib26 logo are for sale online and alongside Wave merchandise on game days at the arena.

“You talk about Giannis and some of those guys, they’ve got help obviously,” said Dan Kuenzi, senior vice president of operations for the Wave. “They’ve got guys pointing them in the right direction telling them what to do. Ian’s kind of done it on his own.

“You don’t see that in indoor soccer.”

The whole package

From a competitive standpoint, joining the Wave paid off nicely for both Bennett and Milwaukee. The team won league championships in his second and third seasons with the Wave.

Bennett has led the Wave in goals each of the past five seasons, increasing his total each year. Last year Bennett finished second in the MASL in goals and points.

This season he has been on the MASL’s “team of the week” five of the first 12 weeks and was named player of the week twice. Bennett leads the Wave (13-3) with 39 goals, second-most in the league, and is tied for the MASL lead with 49 points.

“He came in early in the league and he was just raw speed,” said Wave captain Tenzin Rampa, a teammate since Bennett arrived and his roommate on the road. “Now he’s got raw speed, his finishing ability and tie that in with knowing the indoor game, he’s a very dangerous player.”

But for Bennett, it’s not enough to be able to change the flow of a game with a goal.

He wants to help his team and his sport grow, he wants to create opportunities for himself and he wants to have a positive influence on the people who buy tickets and the kids he meets at the games or camps or anywhere else.

“The fans love him,” Kuenzi said. “You saw his dances after goals. He puts on a show, and the fans eat it up.

“The crowd feeds off of him, and it kind of builds an atmosphere that really is what indoor soccer is all about. It’s about music, it’s about excitement; it’s entertainment, and he’s the entertainer.”

One of the best entertainers you probably don't know.