In Season 3 Episode 4 of I So Appreciate You!, co-hosts Nadege Souvenir and Melanie Hoffert talk to Andrea Yoch, Co-Founder and Chair of Minnesota Aurora FC, the first women-led and community-owned women’s soccer team in this country.

Andrea Yoch spent her entire career in sports mostly working for men. Although she received support from men throughout her career, she was no stranger to the limitations, lack of opportunities, and inequity the industry has historically been known for. When she started the Aurora soccer team with a small group of fellow sports lovers, she knew that she wanted to give women, people of color and other underrepresented groups more opportunities than she had. She and her co-founders believed that creating an inclusive, diverse and safe space not just for players but for the fans and spectators had to be a top priority.

“Part of what’s unique about this team, besides being community-owned, is that we founded it based on our values first. Soccer is absolutely a really important product, but it is not the whole thing. What’s really important for us is to have a space where everybody not only feels welcome but is actually welcome.”

From day one, the Aurora soccer team has valued inclusivity above all else. None of it would have been possible without the over 3,000 community-owners from 48 states and 8 countries who rallied together and raised money to create this innovative team. Within 6 months, they raised a million dollars, sold all of their shares, and started a team that is for the community, by the community. This group of community-owners have a say in what the team does, too – they even voted on the team’s name.

Knowing that everyday people have spent their hard-earned money and entrusted this group with it to create a team means a lot to Andrea. This aspect of accountability to their shareholders is one of the perks of being community-owned.

“It’s sports – you’re going to win and lose on the field. If we’re winning off the field, if we are doing the things we promised our community we are going to do, then we’ve won. That’s for community, by community. This is for all of us. It’s not just for this little group that founded the team – it’s for everybody. The more everybody feels that they’re a part of that, the more successful we will continue to be.”

Andrea also shares with Nadege and Melanie the importance of having an honest conversation about strengths and weaknesses when starting something new, what all the team is doing to further connect to the community and gives an update on how Aurora is doing after two successful seasons.

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Nadege Souvenir:

Welcome, everyone, to I So Appreciate You!, a raw, funny, and uniquely insightful podcast about the issues and opportunities we all face as values-based leaders and humans. I'm Nadege.

Melanie Hoffert:

And I'm Melanie. We're colleagues at the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, and we're friends. When we get together, our conversations can go anywhere, especially when bringing a friend or two along for the ride.

Nadege Souvenir:

So we're inviting you to join us and some incredible guests as we explore the challenges and triumphs of people shaking up our community for the better.

Hey, Mel.

Melanie Hoffert:

Hey, how's it going?

Nadege Souvenir:

It's good.

Melanie Hoffert:

Good.

Nadege Souvenir:

It's good. Are you excited about today's episode?

Melanie Hoffert:

I am very excited.

Nadege Souvenir:

I'm super excited because we will have Andrea Yoch, who is the board chair of Minnesota Aurora. We're going to talk about soccer and sports.

Melanie Hoffert:

Excellent.

Nadege Souvenir:

Which is something I do every day. She deadpans.

Melanie Hoffert:

That was good. Well, I would love to understand a little bit more about your relationship to sports.

Nadege Souvenir:

So I'm not disinterested.

Melanie Hoffert:

We just don't talk a lot about sports.

Nadege Souvenir:

No, because I am not maybe actively a sporty person these days. But I played a lot of sports as a kid, or certainly tried a lot of sports as a kid.

Melanie Hoffert:

Really? Okay. What did you play when you were a kid, and what do you still do today?

Nadege Souvenir:

Well, those are going to be two different answers. All right, so let's see if I can remember all of the things that I did. So tennis. Ooh, that was fun hockey.

Melanie Hoffert:

What?

Nadege Souvenir:

But pause before any of my siblings if they should hear this go, "What in the-?" Only for one little sessions of what was called Mighty Mites, until my father was like, "Wait a second. Hockey? You're a girl. You should be in figure skating." Sorry dad, I had to out you. So he moved me into figure skating, which I quit promptly after one session because I was already in dance class and I thought, why do I need to do that on ice, too? I don't need to do it twice. I was pretty pragmatic or something weird like that.

Horseback riding.

Melanie Hoffert:

What?

Nadege Souvenir:

Yep. There was a whole point where I was trying to lobby for my parents to buy me a horse. I'm not even kidding.

Melanie Hoffert:

It can still happen today.

Nadege Souvenir:

It was like middle school.

Melanie Hoffert:

Can you please get a horse?

Nadege Souvenir:

Let's see, basketball.

Melanie Hoffert:

Mm-hmm. What position did you play?

Nadege Souvenir:

I was a center.

Melanie Hoffert:

Hm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Nadege Souvenir:

Because I was the tallest girl in my middle school, and I was stick-thin and scrawny and useless. But they put me in there anyway and I figured it out. And then in high school, I played basketball a little bit in high school, but in high school it was mostly running cross country and track. I was a hurdler.

Melanie Hoffert:

You were a hurdler. I'm running all... Wow.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah, I wasn't fast, but I had really good form.

Melanie Hoffert:

Technique.

Nadege Souvenir:

And so other coaches would ask my coach, "How did you teach her the technique?" And she's like, "Could you give her some of your kids' speed? I'll trade. Your kid won the race. Mine looks good."

Melanie Hoffert:

You do any of those things today?

Nadege Souvenir:

No. You kidding? I barely like to run, and don't do it unless I absolutely have to.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I forgot to say I did take golf lessons once.

Melanie Hoffert:

Oh, yeah.

Nadege Souvenir:

And did kickboxing for a while. No, now, I just try to work out and do stuff, but don't actively engage in a sport. Joshua and I have talked about maybe taking tennis up.

Melanie Hoffert:

How about pickleball? Have you tried that yet? It's all the rage.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah. That might be the reason I don't want to do it. I don't know, just out of stubbornness.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

Okay. I just went down my sports history.

Melanie Hoffert:

Which I just learned a lot, so I have to process this. You as a hockey player especially.

Nadege Souvenir:

I was little. It was Mighty Mites. You could barely skate.

Melanie Hoffert:

That's a thing. So when I was growing up, and again, I'm from a small town, so everyone does everything sort of. But I played basketball all through high school, and I loved basketball. I wanted to be really good and, well, Emily, my wife and I have this debate. Because I was an athlete, and she's like, "You were not." Yes, I was! I was really, really good. But I wish I would've been a little bit better in basketball, but I started and such.

Nadege Souvenir:

Better how? You could have played in college or something?

Melanie Hoffert:

Yeah, I would've been like that standout player. Because when I was a little kid, I was just eyes wide open with these amazing women in basketball. So I practiced outside in the winter until my gloves had holes in the fingertips. That was my thing.

Nadege Souvenir:

It's like a scene from a rural movie.

Melanie Hoffert:

It was.

Nadege Souvenir:

You practicing outside.

Melanie Hoffert:

No.

Nadege Souvenir:

Okay.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes. Yes, exactly. With my boom box, all of it. Yes.

I was in track. I really did not enjoy running. Even though later in life I was like, oh, I get it now. You don't have to be tortured the whole time's. But I hated it. So I switched from running to being a shop put thrower. I threw javelin and discus. And then what else? We didn't have a lot of girls' sports back then. Now, they have volleyball, which is great.

I would've loved to have played football. So I played football with the boys on the playground all through elementary school, and it was really fun. It's where my love of football, I think, came from because I love football today. But it was also really... I don't know. It was hard because I was often the only girl and I was scarred one time in third grade where we got into a scuffle, the football players. So all of the football players had to stand in for recess, and I was the only girl, and I felt so called out and embarrassed by it. So all that early gender, what you should do and shouldn't do, sort of stuff that I'm still working through.

But, yeah. And so I'm curious if you watch any sports?

Nadege Souvenir:

Not actively. I went through phases. I was a big basketball fan when I was a kid. The Chicago Bulls, we watched all of the championships. I got into football a little bit because of the Dallas Cowboys and watching a documentary on Emmett Smith. So there was two seasons where I was super into the Cowboys for whatever reason, because whatever.

But no, I don't actively watch sports. If and when I get invited to go to games, I have a nice time, but it's not, when I think about the hours in my day, it isn't where…

Melanie Hoffert:

It's not one of your priorities.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes, yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

But maybe I should. Maybe I got to go back through my kid’s sports list and figure out if I should start doing some of them again.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yeah, I think you and Joshua should come over on Sunday for a football game. All right. I think we should just watch the Vikings. You can see what happens at our place, which is, oh gosh, there's a lot of activity that happens. A lot of energy, but we definitely enjoy it.

Nadege Souvenir:

All right. Well, I think with that, should we get into this conversation?

Melanie Hoffert:

Oh, yeah, someone who really knows sports.

Nadege Souvenir:

I know, like super sports. And soccer.

Melanie Hoffert:

And soccer.

Nadege Souvenir:

One that I think neither of us is a particular diehard expert. So we are about to learn a bunch, right?

Melanie Hoffert:

I can't wait.

Thank you for tuning in today. If you have not yet had a chance to listen to past episodes of I So Appreciate You!, Visit spmcf.org slash podcast to catch up. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Google Spotify, or wherever you are listening to us right now.

Welcome back, everyone. We are here today with Andrea Yoch. Andrea, how are you doing?

Andrea Yoch:

I'm great, thank you. It's so great to be here.

Melanie Hoffert:

It's so great to have you. Before we jump into, I know, what's going to be a lively discussion, we just want to let our listeners know a little bit about who you are and why we're talking to you.

So to start off, you're the founder and current chair of the board of the Aurora soccer team, and it's the first - and correct me if I get any of these details wrong, because there's so many firsts here - first women-led independent and community-owned women's soccer team in the country.

Andrea Yoch:

That is correct.

Melanie Hoffert:

That's right. You also, I was very excited to learn this about you, have deep experience in marketing and in sports, and were previously very instrumental as the vice president of business development at the Minnesota United. I'm sure many people are familiar with our soccer team there, and-

Andrea Yoch:

On the men's side.

Melanie Hoffert:

Men's side, yes. And were part of that team's move to become a Major League Soccer expansion franchise. Is that correct?

Andrea Yoch:

Correct, yes.

Melanie Hoffert:

Two other little fun tidbits that I learned about you. You were Boston College Heights's first female sports editor.

Andrea Yoch:

I was, way back in the day, before women were doing sports.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes. Right. And then you're also just a trailblazer in general in journalism, as I have looked up your career. And lastly, I know you grew up in Baltimore. Is that right?

Andrea Yoch:

I am a proud Baltimore native.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes. Your parents were immigrants, and your father introduced you to sports in ways. That was the way you two connected.

Andrea Yoch:

Right. Yeah, we did that together. He was trying to assimilate to America and kind of understanding what everybody talked about on Monday mornings, and sports was the way to do that.

Melanie Hoffert:

That's great. Great. So very happy to have you here.

Andrea Yoch:

Well, thank you so much.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah. Well, before we dive into the meat of the interview, we have something we like to do with all of our guests. We call it three quick questions. So I'm going to just jump right in. Pancakes or waffles?

Andrea Yoch:

Waffles, because it holds the syrup and the butter in the squares.

Nadege Souvenir:

See, I agree with that, and also the little bit of crunch for me on the waffles is key.

Andrea Yoch:

Yes.

Melanie Hoffert:

Gosh, I know what you're saying about the waffles, but the pancake soaks up that butter and syrup in a particular way that I enjoy, but I could go with either, especially this time of year.

Andrea Yoch:

Fair enough.

Nadege Souvenir:

All right. Bowling or mini golf?

Andrea Yoch:

Oh, mini golf.

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh, that was without hesitation.

Andrea Yoch:

But a good mini golf course. Not one of the lame ones where they don't put any effort into the obstacles. Can Can Wonderland. That is the perfect mini golf.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yep, that's a really good one. All right, last one. Bonfire outside or fireplace inside?

Andrea Yoch:

Fireplace inside. Because as we just discussed, I am a city girl through and through. I grew up in Baltimore in the city. I had not seen a bonfire until I came to Minnesota.

Melanie Hoffert:

I think that's a pull quote for this podcast.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right?

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

Indeed.

Melanie Hoffert:

Wonderful. Well, Andrea, we're going to jump in at the origin story of the Aurora. Because I just think it's really fascinating, especially having attended a game myself for the first time this last year. Seeing the thousands of excited fans, it was amazing. And then knowing, and I'd love for you to tell the story, that what I understand is you were in a park with a handful of other women during the pandemic after maybe a low point in your career, and this idea was born from that. So could you take us through the beginnings of this amazing sports team?

Andrea Yoch:

Absolutely, and just to be completely accurate-

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes, make us accurate.

Andrea Yoch:

... it was not my idea. There were two men who had the idea, men that I had known when I was at Minnesota United. And I got a message on Twitter from one of them, Matt Privratsky, saying, "Hey, we're going to have this meeting about maybe starting a women's soccer team. Would you be interested in attending?" It was during COVID. I am a sports and entertainment marketer. There was no sports and entertainment happening. Because my job is to gather large groups of people together and-

Nadege Souvenir:

Basically the opposite of COVID.

Andrea Yoch:

... basically the opposite of what we were being told to do. So I will go to any meeting for any reason at any time, so I said yes. But then especially around sports and women's sports. So I said yes. I said to my husband, "Do you want to go?" He's like, "Sure." He wasn't doing anything either. So we met at a park outside a brewery. There were about 25 people at that first meeting.

Melanie Hoffert:

Do you love how I've revised the story to be all women. The lens that I just brought to this, yeah.

Andrea Yoch:

It's important. I get asked a lot about the all women, the men. I have had a lot of support from men throughout my whole career, and Aurora was built by a combination. Our leadership is all female, but we wouldn't be here without the men as well. So we met at that park. Out of that, a group of five people emerged as being very committed to this idea of bringing in women's soccer team to town, and the basis of it was everybody was sort of sitting around waiting for a really rich person to start a team. And the idea was, why are we waiting? Maybe we as normal people can figure out how to do this. Why not give it a try?

And so from there we started having more regular meetings and figured out we had to find some funding. And so Wes Burdine, who owns the Blackheart in St. Paul and is one of our founders and board members, and he's very, very committed to equality and uplifting all communities. He said, "Well, I've seen these men's teams do a community ownership campaign where they sell shares. Maybe we can do that." So then we proceeded down that road, and our initial goal when we decided to sell shares in the team - we were Minnesota Women's Soccer, we didn't have a name - was if we could raise $300,000, we would be happy. That would be enough to get us up and running, maybe hire a few part-time people, see what happens. We raised a million dollars. We sold out all of our shares before the deadline was over. So it's a 90-day campaign, are the rules. We sold out all of our shares. We raised a million dollars. We had 3,080 owners of our soccer team from 48 states and eight countries. So our story spread worldwide. And next thing we knew, we had the money, and now we had to create a team. And that all happened within six months.

Melanie Hoffert:

Wow. That-

Nadege Souvenir:

That is fast. So I'm going to pull you back a little bit, because you said from that 25 people, there were five people, and I'm going to assume that you were one of the five. Yes, one of the five.

Andrea Yoch:

Yeah. Yes. Five, yeah.

Nadege Souvenir:

I'm not going to revise that bit of history. But I'd just love to know, why was it important to you that Minnesota have a women's soccer team?

Andrea Yoch:

Well, for me personally, I had worked in men's sports my whole career. And in 2019, I had the first opportunity to work with women. I worked on a tournament called the Women's International Champions Cup. Unfortunately, it did not survive, but it was a tournament that brought four top women's teams from around the world together to play each other over a long few days.

The best women's soccer players in the world were standing right in front of me. They had just come off the World Cup. You're standing right there looking at this magnificence of hitting all of your career peaks. Right? You've won the World Cup. You're the best professionally. In the case of one of the players that I admire, most Jessica McDonald, she was also a mother. They're doing all these things and I had a shift where I realized these women are so much more powerful, really, because of all of the other things they're up against. They're in terrible playing conditions. They're changing in portapotties. A lot of times, they're in places that don't have locker rooms.

And so when we got together with this idea, it was let's level the playing field. Let's create a space for women to continue their careers on and off the field in a safe environment where they can get the skills necessary to go into sports. It was something that I never had growing up. I didn't have female role models. I have worked for one female in my entire career in the sports industry, and that was way back when in the 1992 Super Bowl, Marilyn Carlson Nelson, who I think everybody adores in Minnesota. She was the head of that Super Bowl committee. That's the only female I have ever worked for, and I'm not young. And so that was part of what was motivating me, personally.

Melanie Hoffert:

You mentioned creating a safe space, and I noticed and heard even before I went to the game that it's kind of a unique sporting experience by design. It is a safe place for people who maybe have not always felt welcomed at sporting events to come and be themselves. I'll speak specifically to my experience being a queer woman, seeing rainbow flags. It was a really fun place to be, and seeing all the little kids that were taking in a very diverse crowd. So could you explain a little bit about how you designed the safe space for the spectators of the sport?

Andrea Yoch:

Right. So part of what's unique about this team, besides being community-owned, is that we founded it based on our values first. Soccer is absolutely a really important product, but it is not the whole thing. What's really important for us is to have a space where everybody not only feels welcome, but is actually welcome.

For me and the other founders and the board members, when we're walking around the concourse and I see same-sex holding hands. We have a lot of transgender fans, and they feel comfortable and happy enough to have spent their money at our games to be themselves at our games. So not two women walking along not holding hands, even though they're married, because they don't feel like they can. To me, that means we've created this space that clearly there's a demand for. There's clearly not enough spaces. This is a very, very crowded market. There's a lot of sports, a lot of entertainment, a lot of theater and concerts and everything else, and yet we have figured out how to welcome in a community that obviously wasn't feeling welcome other spaces. That doesn't mean we don't want everybody else, but we definitely have catered to creating a space for people that maybe don't feel like they can go and be themselves at the other sports. That's been really important to us.

And so in all of our hiring decisions in how we display, not just our pride flags, but we had a Black Lives Matter game. All of those things we're doing very intentionally and deliberately to continue to live our values every day.

Melanie Hoffert:

That's great.

Nadege Souvenir:

There is such alignment, I think, in some of the values that Aurora has, with some of the values the foundation has. I was really thinking about how our approach to equity, we talk about dismantling the hierarchy of human value. That word dismantling is not a small word. And then when I looked at Aurora's values, it's the dismantling of racism, misogyny, and bigotry of all kinds. Like full stop, done. We're going to get rid of it. Tell me how you got to establishing that ethos so clearly in what Aurora does at the outset. Because there are companies who are still struggling with the very concept of diversity, and y'all are dismantling it.

Andrea Yoch:

We're ambitious. So if you know anything about sports, and I don't know how it is in the foundation world, but there's a very long tradition in sports of hiring your son, your nephew, your grandson. And without naming names, I can give examples across the Twin cities of women whose positions have been moved because the grandson wants to go into that position. Underqualified people who get jobs because they're related.

Part of what we are trying to dismantle is everyone has to apply for a job the exact same way. Sure, your neighbor's son is applying for a job. Great. We will note that, when they have gone through the proper application process, as "I know this young man, I've known him since he was 12. He's reliable, trustworthy, pleasant." The same way any other job reference would come in. As opposed to, "Oh, my neighbor's son wants to come work for Aurora. We better give them a job."

It's that simple concept that everyone must apply equally. We're not skipping any steps. It is more work, for sure. Especially for some of the things we try to do with three days notice, it is easier to call the neighbor's son and say, "Hey, can you come haul boxes?" But we've fought really hard to stick to the system of even in hiring, it is equal. By that, we hopefully will dismantle some of the sports things that have kept women and people of color out of the game because our dads aren't all out on the golf course.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah.

Melanie Hoffert:

I know mine wasn't.

Andrea Yoch:

Yeah, mine certainly wasn't.

Melanie Hoffert:

Mine was on a tractor.

Nadege Souvenir:

And mine was an engineer behind a screen, so no golf.

Andrea Yoch:

He probably doesn't want to come out and talk to anybody anyway.

Melanie Hoffert:

We've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs on this podcast, and looking at your career history and, really, working with a group of people and having a lot of support, but you were instrumental in taking something from just an idea to this thing that it is today. Can you, for other people who might be involved in the early stages of anything, talk a little bit about your process, your personal career process to bring this thing to life?

Andrea Yoch:

Well, with Aurora specifically, when the five of us sort of emerged as being committed, we looked around at each other and figured out what skills were missing from the group. So having sort of an honest conversation about, well, I'm good at this and you're good at that and you're good at that, but we need a lawyer. We need somebody who's good at finances. That's a really important thing, is to sort of have that honest look of who do you have around you to make you successful.

And so we went out and recruited a few more people to be a part of that founding group. So there's actually nine founders because we had shortcomings. And so I think part of it is whether it's personal or you're starting off professionally - and my father-in-law is an entrepreneur, and I've seen him do this over the years - is figuring out what are your weaknesses. And then how do you go find those people who aren't necessarily like-minded. You don't want a yes person around you. You want people who are seeing things from different views.

So on our group, we have former soccer players. Then, we have people like me who have never played soccer but have worked in the sports business. We have community members. We all pushed each other to be like, "Well, that's not how I'm seeing it, and I think this is more important than that." It's painful and it can be, and luckily we're all still talking to each other and we're all still friends. But I think that was part of it, is identifying your strengths, your weaknesses, and where do you need help to help have a full... And we're certainly not perfect, but at least we feel like we had the right people at the table to get us to where we needed to be.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yeah, yeah. That's great. Just the strength in identifying your weakness is the nugget I'm taking from that. Oftentimes, we try not to look at that and examine it, so I appreciate your insight.

Nadege Souvenir:

So Aurora is really for community and buy community. Sometimes when people say, oh, we're community based or focused, it's like they do one thing and they try to use that as the broad brush to paint their community involvement. But you all were community from the very beginning. As much as the name, the logo, the essence of what Auro-

Andrea Yoch:

It was on our first scarf. It was Minnesota Women's Soccer.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right. What is that saying? I'm going to get it wrong. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, take community with you. Can you talk a little bit about the wins, so to speak, of being that community based, and some of the things that are made harder but worth doing?

Andrea Yoch:

Yeah, so one of our clients who I love is a minority business owner in the Twin cities, and he talks about this being one of the greatest grassroots campaigns he's ever seen. In a lot of ways it is that we have 3,080 people that will talk about us nonstop. If you have bought shares in something, you are very committed to that something. During the course of the community owner campaign, we would see people on Twitter - X, whatever, it was Twitter at the time - saying, "I just have to wait till I get my paycheck on Friday to buy my Aurora shares." Now, the minimum investment was a hundred dollars. So when you're reading that as someone who has created the team, realizing that a hundred dollars, they have to wait to be able to spend it on Friday, and then they're choosing to trust us, people they don't know, with a made up idea in a park; that responsibility sits very, very heavy with you. It sits with you in your hiring, when you're bringing in partners, making sure everybody is value aligned.

But then the flip side is we also run into those people everywhere. So the founders of the team and the current board, we all live here. We're not hiding in mansions anywhere. Most of us are St. Paul residents. I can run into a community owner at Cobb, and if they're not happy, they're going to let us know. So it's much easier to keep everybody happy, run into them, and then have them want to talk about the team, because they're very excited or they're sad because we lost. It's sports. You are going to win and lose on the field. But if we're winning off the field, if we're doing the things we promised our community we are going to do, then we've won, and that's the four community by community. This is for all of us. It's not just for this little group that founded the team. It's for everybody.

And the more everybody feels like they're a part of that, the more successful we'll continue to be. Because what happens is then you bring your neighbors. You came to a game last year, right? You had a good time. You've been talking about it. You're going to bring more people next year.

Nadege Souvenir:

She's going to bring me next year. I haven't been yet. I'm so sorry.

Andrea Yoch:

It's okay. But that's what's happening, is this very true word of mouth marketing, which is an incredibly powerful thing. If we can live up to the promise of, she had a great time at the game, now she's going to bring you to the game. Hopefully you have a great time at the game. You're going to go tell more people. "Do you know about this thing? You need to come." There's nothing more powerful.

Nadege Souvenir:

It's so great. And I'm just thinking as you describe it - because like I've said, I've not yet been - it feels so much more than a soccer game. I say that not to disparage the sport, but there are some people who might otherwise just be like, "I'm not into sports." But you are describing an experience that is not just sports, it's truly community.

Andrea Yoch:

Well, the way I grew up experiencing sports with my father, I didn't have any idea what was happening on the field. We'd never watched. We didn't have generations worth of people telling us what was happening. But I grew up in a time in Baltimore where the Orioles were really good, and the way it lifted up the city... And one of my favorite things that I've talked about before is we were in game six of the World Series. I was 13. I lost my voice. Because my dad and I had been lucky enough to go to a lot of the games, I had nothing left. There was nothing coming out of my mouth. The man next to me was like 6'8". He was at trucker, and we had kind of gotten to be high-fiving buddies during the game. My voice was gone. He taught me how to whistle. This man spent four innings teaching me how to whistle so that by the sixth inning, I've got a great four-finger whistle. I still use it to this day because I'd lost my voice. We became best friends in that moment. To me, that's the beauty of sports.

I'm a big Taylor Swift fan. What everybody was writing about during the Taylor Swift concerts is not the music, it's the environment. It's the joy. I think the New York Times wrote a big article. If we could live in this Taylor Swift world all the time, things would be better. But the experience of being in that Taylor Swift bubble is similar to Aurora. It's a party, but it's not an obnoxious party. People are happy, they're relaxed, they're fun. Yes, there is soccer happening, but we also have Ghirardelli chocolates up on the concourse, and you can make s'mores and never watch soccer, and that's fine.

Melanie Hoffert:

Well, you were in a moment in time where you had this great team where you're watching, and for those people who you've now piqued their interest about the sports team, can you just talk a little bit about how the team is doing? Because aren't you-

Andrea Yoch:

We're really good.

Melanie Hoffert:

... are really good.

Andrea Yoch:

We're really good.

Melanie Hoffert:

Tell us that.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yes, go and brag on [inaudible 00:29:40] a little bit.

Andrea Yoch:

So the piece we couldn't plan for... Well, a lot of things we couldn't plan for. But the piece we truly couldn't plan for was, are we going to be any good at soccer? Right? We have the whole market hyped up. We've sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise that say Minnesota Aurora before we even played a minute of soccer. We hired this amazing young woman, Nicole Lukic, to be our head coach. We come out, we tie our first game. It's at home. Okay, a little disappointing, but our players were quite shocked to come out into a stadium with 6,000 people in it. The most they'd ever played in front of was maybe 300. Bright lights, loud music. We learned some lessons from maybe preparing them a little bit better.

And then we won the whole way through the regular season. We never lost a game. Our first season, we made it all the way to the championship game, which we hosted out at Twin Cities Orthopedic, Stadium and we lost in the 118th minute, which is the biggest heartbreak I've ever had in my life. So season two comes around, the expectations are really, really high. We go undefeated again. And this time, not just undefeated; we were winning games by six goals, eight goals, 10 goals, which is unheard of in soccer.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right. I was like, I'm not a huge soccer fan, and I know that's crazy.

Andrea Yoch:

It was crazy. What turned out to be the problem is that when you're winning by 10 goals, your competition maybe isn't quite up to snuff. So then we got to the playoffs, we won our first game, and then we lost in the quarterfinals in our second year. So we have only ever lost two games, so far in two seasons.

Nadege Souvenir:

That's bananas.

Andrea Yoch:

Both were in the playoffs. We're undefeated in the regular season. And so yeah, Nicole is a genius. We will see her continuing to do great things in her future, and we're just really lucky to have her. And the other thing that's really cool is these young women are amazing. They're not just amazing soccer players. They are also amazing members of our community. They also uphold our values. And so Nicole put together a group of women who align with Aurora and are really great soccer players, and it works.

Melanie Hoffert:

I can't wait for our game. I can't wait to be-

Andrea Yoch:

May seems so far away.

Melanie Hoffert:

... making s'mores and cheering.

Nadege Souvenir:

Melanie's already got the, maybe it's a podcast live episode.

Melanie Hoffert:

Ooh!

Andrea Yoch:

Ooh.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yes, like-

Andrea Yoch:

Absolutely.

Melanie Hoffert:

That'd be fun.

Andrea Yoch:

Do a little pregame thing.

Melanie Hoffert:

Exactly. We're doing that.

Nadege Souvenir:

Great. I've just committed us to more work. Sorry, y'all.

Andrea Yoch:

Everybody's welcome.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yeah.

Nadege Souvenir:

Well, so I want to just pivot to you maybe just a little bit before we wrap up. Because as Melanie sort of talked about you've broken barriers in your career and this is a new thing, the whole, "I'm starting a soccer club." You're doing it at a time where I think in a lot of women's careers, we're starting to feel like, how do we show up in the space? Or, are we getting the attention that we deserve? Or feeling like, can I do a new thing this deep into my career? Can you talk about the bravery or how you just sort of found yourself, "I'm going to do a new thing, and it doesn't matter when it is, I'm doing it now."

Andrea Yoch:

Yeah. So it's funny, the day we went to this meeting in the park and we got done with the meeting, we got in the car. My husband, who's literally put up with this nonsense since we met when I was 19. He said, "You're going to do this, aren't you?" And I'm like, "Oh, yeah. Absolutely." He is like, "Okay, whatever you need, we're going to do this."

And so part of it starts with the support of your family. Both of my boys are community owners. They bought shares separately because they didn't want to share a vote. So they were both in college at the time and scraped together their hundred dollars. Their friends are all community owners. So you can't do it without your immediate community, first of all.

But I think part of it is I had some unfinished business. I had been let go from Minnesota United. I never got to see the team. I wasn't with the team when it went pro. I was with the team when it was minor... Or not went pro, but when it went to Major League Soccer.

So part of what was I didn't get to finish what I had wanted, and also the opportunity was there. We had just come off a time where NCAA athletes, the female athletes were starting to show us the disparity between what they were getting and what the men were going. The WNBA athletes were in the Wubble eating off of plastic plates and plastic forks while the men in the NBA were having steak with steak knives off of real China. All of those things had happened in the few months before Aurora was created, and suddenly I was at this place of looking back on my career and thinking, I've been in the men's space this whole time, without really stopping and wondering, why didn't I ever get the top jobs? Why haven't I ever been in charge? Why have I always been so close but not quite there? And realizing I have every bit of ability to do this as the men do, and I want to do it.

Part of it is the desire I want to do this. My kids were out of the house, we were empty nesters. I felt like I had another career, I guess. I don't know if it's another career, but I had another effort in me before I was done. So while I am the oldest member of the organization, I'm not close to the rocking chair. I mean not at all. No, and I may never get to the rocking chair according to my husband. But I think that was part of it, is I had more to give and a little bit of what is the point of having lived in a community your entire adult life, having done all of those things, if you don't get to pull them all together into a neat, tidy bow, and Aurora has so much been a culmination of every relationship I've had, every job I've had, all the experiences coming together to allow us to get this team to be a real, living, breathing thing. Plus, I just have a lot of energy.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right? I can tell just from that response.

Melanie Hoffert:

It's clear, I kind of want to bookmark this for myself and just listeners because it is just so cool, and again, back to where we started with this conversation. For me, to be in that stadium with thousands of roaring fans and just knowing now that you were at a low point and you came together with these people, and you came out like a lion. Just like, "I'm not done."

Andrea Yoch:

I don't tend to do things halfway, but the real impetus was once we started telling people like, "Shh secret." Like, "Hey, we're thinking about doing this thing." The reaction across the board... I work in marketing, so a lot of friends in the media. And so as I was prepping the media for this secret announcement, the reaction from my friends in the media was, "How can I help?" Not, "Are you crazy? What are you thinking?" It was, "How can I help? What can I do? Let me know where I sign up."

And so when you get that excited response from really respected local media people... Dawn Mitchell over at Channel 9; Chris Hawkey, who's a good friend of mine at KFAN, he's a community owner; Jason DeRusha at CCO Radio. Went across the board. They're all ready to jump in. Then, you get more energy from that, too. Right? You're ready to go.

And so that's really where it just kept feeding us like, "Oh, this is going," and then we would hit our next mark, like the community ownership campaign and raise a million dollars. Then, we put our tickets on sale, and instead of having 3000 people in the stadium which is what we thought, the Vikings called and said, "You have to open up the whole stadium. We can sell out the whole stadium." And we're like, "What do you mean, the whole stadium?" And they're like, "No, the whole stadium." And so then you've sold 6,000 tickets, and then people are standing in line for your merchandise. It just keeps feeding you, and it's a wonderful, beautiful thing.

Melanie Hoffert:

Wow. I'm inspired.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah. I feel like I got to go do something.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right?

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes.

Andrea Yoch:

You guys do great work.

Nadege Souvenir:

Well, this conversation has been, I mean, a pure joy. It's just been the energy in this room. I hope, listeners, you can feel it because I can feel it, but I would like to ask you specifically just to kind of wind down our conversation, what brings you joy?

Andrea Yoch:

Talking about Aurora brings me joy, clearly. I was a little tired when I got in here, but yeah. I love sports and events. I'm an extrovert. Talking to you guys has given me more energy. I love sports and events. I got to go to the Vikings game on Sunday with my son. It was so much fun.

Melanie Hoffert:

That was a good one.

Andrea Yoch:

So I am not super deep. I like great music, I like being gathered together, I like my teams winning and high-fiving everybody, and so I get a lot of joy from that. I'm lucky to be at a place in my life where I get to do a lot of it. The success of Aurora is there's nothing like walking into the stadium and seeing all those people, and the first night we opened when everybody was coming in, a few of us founders were sitting on the stairs and we were just crying. We were holding hands. There's a picture of us sitting on the stairs holding each other's hands, just beyond belief that we invited everybody to this party about this crazy idea, and not only did they show up, but everybody brought presents. It's still just incredible to talk about. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever been a part of, and we can't wait for the future.

Nadege Souvenir:

Wow.

Melanie Hoffert:

That is a beautiful image to end on. Andrea, we really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us, and we'll see you at the game.

Andrea Yoch:

Yeah, schedule should be out in February.

Melanie Hoffert:

Great.

Wow. That last image of those people sitting on the step, realizing their idea, it's just a really powerful one. I'm moved by it. What are you feeling at this hour?

Nadege Souvenir:

No, same. There was just so much energy in how she talked about the work and the team and what they do, and so little of it was about soccer, even though we were talking about soccer the entire time. I don't know if that makes any sense, the words coming out of my mouth, but you know what I'm saying?

Melanie Hoffert:

Completely. Soccer is sort of a product of their values-based approach. They wanted to create this... It's almost like energy. That's what I'm taking away from it. If I'm going to boil down what I am personally going to take away from it, how do I both appreciate the energy that's put into things that I might not be... I am interested in soccer. It's new to me. It's not a sport that I followed my whole life. But, really, being able to enjoy things that might not be my first interest, but the expression of creativity, it's really cool.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah. No, for me, it's really around the community and the welcome. It's not just that you're saying everybody is welcome, it's that they actually are welcome, and so I look forward to receiving that welcome.

Melanie Hoffert:

Absolutely.

Nadege Souvenir:

Thank you for listening to I So Appreciate You! You can find us on Facebook at I So Appreciate You! Podcast, and on Twitter and Instagram @soappreciateyou.

Melanie Hoffert:

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Nadege Souvenir:

Have a question or topic suggestion? Email us at podcast@spmcf.org. Thank you for listening to I So Appreciate You!