I Will Reach The Summit: Omaha's Ed Gordon

Every Summit League student-athlete has a story and “Reaching The Summit” means something different to each one of them. In these features, we let our student-athletes share those stories in their own words. Thanks for taking a look.

I believe that on the day I was born, it was decided for me that I would grow up and live my life with a ball at my feet. My grandfather was the first president of the CYSL and my father played Division I soccer at the University of Notre Dame; fate must have deemed it a no-brainer. 

Growing up in Omaha, Creighton was the only major soccer school around. They were the staple of Omaha soccer and they drew every local boy and girl who wanted to grow up and be a professional soccer player to their summer camps. To us campers, Creighton was a huge milestone in our careers, but that wasn't all that was in store for us; Creighton was just a step along the way. We went to the Creighton games wearing our autographed shirts from camp and cheered on the guys at halftime, hoping they would remember who we were from each past summer. 

However, that all changed in 2011 when the University of Nebraska-Omaha hired Jason Mims to be the first head coach of the new men's soccer program. 

Another DI soccer program in Omaha and not even 15 minutes away from the Big East giant, Creighton? Things could get interesting I suppose, but everyone thought that competing with Creighton would take a while. It's a brand new team, how good could they be? 

Not even a short three years later, Omaha shared a Summit League regular season championship with Denver in 2014. 

During Mims' first few years at UNO, he picked up a coaching job at Sporting Omaha (formerly known as Omaha FC), coaching a team of 14-year-olds. This was about the time my view shifted toward the Mavericks. I stopped watching Creighton's games and stopped following them altogether and started watching UNO religiously with a few of my club teammates. 

My eyes were always glued on one player, Mark Moulton. He played soccer at Creighton Prep, the high school I attended, won titles and wore the Captain band on his arm both at Prep and UNO. He became my idol. I wanted to be like Mark. I wanted to do things like Mark did. I wanted to work as hard as Mark, I wanted to be a part of a team glued together by fearless leadership just like the team Mark was on. In my eyes, and the eyes of many others, Mark Moulton embodied, "If you work hard enough, you can do anything" and that's who I wanted to be.

From ages 14-17, I did more maturing as a person than I ever could have imagined. I think deep down, all of us club guys thought we were Mims' second UNO team - he treated us like 20-year olds and he expected us to act accordingly. It was business. You show up to train and you give it your best. If you weren't up for that, you might as well stay home. 

Over that span of time, it became obvious that Coach Mims coached us because he wanted local talent to be the backbone of his college team; and we were the prospects. What better way to find local talent than to coach and teach a group of kids for a few years? It was a genius idea. 

None of the kids on this team were incredible by any means, but we worked harder than anyone else we played, including other club teams in Omaha, at regional tournaments. Even though we were never as talented as some of the academy teams, it wasn't difficult to see which team worked harder, ran farther, and wanted it more. We coined the term, "The Mims Effect", and no matter what team he coaches, those qualities shine through. 

If you watch Union Omaha, you'll see what I mean. Not the best technical team, but those guys fight. And they fight until the end - until they can't fight anymore. This was a quality that Mark Moulton's team boasted. And a quality that I try to instill in myself.

I don’t remember much from my first game at UNO, just a few snapshot memories here and there. But one thing I do remember is my heart pounding at a speed I had never felt before. I have been nervous, but this was a different feeling, a different kind of nervous. To be frank, I didn’t even know what I was nervous for. However, I do know that being nervous is a good thing because if you aren’t nervous, that means you don’t care. 

One memory I do have is walking up through the stadium hallway and through the smoke with the walk-out song blasting and cowbells ringing. During those short seven steps from that hallway to the stairs leading down to the field, I remember thinking, “This is it.”