Sacramento Republic’s Wheeler-Omiunu pens personal essay to ‘express yourself’

Sacramento Republic FC midfielder Andrew Wheeler-Omiunu is the latest player to pen a personal essay on the USL Championship’s website, which ran Friday.

Wheeler-Omiunu describes his upbringing as a biracial kid growing up in Massachusetts, with his parents’ diverging approaches to raising him:

I remember my mother, always animated in her excitement, yelling and cheering – despite at the time not really knowing too much about the particulars of the sport – excitedly gesticulating in support of me and whatever team I was playing on. That support would remain a constant. In juxtaposition, my father, more reserved, ceaselessly analyzing performances and offering advice. His demeanor would also remain a constant. But most importantly, from the beginning, I knew they loved watching me play. When I would make a good play and a wry smile would break through my father’s stoic façade, that was it, man. That was the good stuff.

The midfielder discusses race, balancing soccer with other pursuits in life and more in the essay, whose title is a bit of a personal ethos — “Express Yourself.”

It’s an engaging read, and one that helps you get to know the player a little bit better. After a year in which just about everything was socially distanced or done at home, newcomers to Sac Republic like AWO we may not know as well as one might have hoped. Hopefully this year we’ll get to know him better.

Read the whole thing on the league website.

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