'I'd rather be busy than bored' - Former USMNT center back Jay DeMerit scrapped his way to the top of professional soccer with Watford, and he hasn't stopped since

DeMerit has been shaped by his past. He’s the first to admit that. By his own estimation, he had nine different jobs before making it as a footballer. 

He could have been a bartender. He dabbled in groundskeeping. He worked in a supermarket and drove a van around. He did what he could to keep playing soccer. The full story is well chronicled at this point. In 2001, DeMerit left the University of Illinois Chicago with a degree in industrial design. He was never drafted into Major League Soccer, and spent time as a bartender after college. He had roughly $2,000 to his name, and after being granted a European passport thanks to his Danish grandmother, went to England to play soccer. 

He started in the ninth division, where he made £40 per week. He impressed enough to earn a trial at Watford, then a Championship club. By 2007, he was captaining the team. That same year, he was called up to the USMNT. By the time he retired in 2014, DeMerit had played 213 games for Watford and 71 for Vancouver Whitecaps - captaining both. He represented the USMNT 25 times and started at the 2010 World Cup. Against Algeria, he played with a split tongue that required five stitches after full-time. 

“I'm the renegade from Wisconsin that was never supposed to be there. I don't give a f*ck who you are. I'm a blue-collar worker guy. So I'll just go out and fight for my team,” he said.

Life after football has perhaps been more interesting - if only because DeMerit didn’t have a singular passion to pursue. His solution? Try everything. 

His appetite for staying entertained has taken many forms. But it can really be traced back to one phone call. DeMerit was still figuring things out post-retirement. His friend, who was hosting a music festival, called him on an otherwise innocuous day. 

“He's like, ‘Hey, Jay, I know you just retired. I know you like to party. Like, can you help me facilitate these people? So we had 850 people camping in our yard, and 50,000 people camping across the street,” DeMerit recalled. 

He jumped. 

“I couldn't go to a music festival, because then I would have to leave for four days. And so it's like, ‘oh, this music festival is coming to my backyard, and I can actually go for four days.’ That's new. That's fun,” DeMerit said. 

What followed was a deep dive into the electronic music scene. DeMerit volunteered his time, and, occasionally, his house, every year for the Pemberton Music Festival. He ran after parties in his backyard in the mountains above Vancouver, exhausted patrons dancing from midnight until 6 a.m. 

Business ventures followed. He designed, marketed, and sold “Rockit Logs”, advanced speakers made out of the cavities of dead trees (list price $200). And when Pembteron became a bit tiresome, he started his own music festival, and put a chunk of the proceeds towards running his community programming (it was eventually called off when operating costs became too high to sustain). 

“I was like, ‘Why don’t I just start my own festival? And so then we did a Rise and Shine Festival, which was our charity. And so all the tickets went to raising money for the programs. So we did that… but now festivals are too expensive,” he said. 

That drew him into the idea of community. His post-playing career was different than most. DeMerit, when he looked at his past, figured he would be best used taking an unusual path. 

This was, after all, a player who had a critically acclaimed documentary made about his journey while he was playing (they raised $200,000 to get footage rights for the film). 

“For me, it was a purpose story. I didn't know how important my story could be until you actually told it to the world,” he said.

After that, it became clear: Punditry, coaching, all of that conventional soccer stuff? That wouldn’t be authentic to who he was. 

“I think you got to go back to your soft skills. And so my soft skills were design and creation and things like this. And so I just went back to passions. And when you transition, I think you automatically start to do things that you couldn't do when you play,” DeMerit said. 

Yes, music was part of that. But in giving back, he thought about who he was as a person - not just his experience battling on a pitch. 

“My story was built around art creation. It was built on this kind of doggedness and a resiliency and all these things," he said. 

He dabbled in the standard sort of soccer camps, going out to fields and coaching here and there. 

“I was working for the Whitecaps, rolling out to some suburb for 300 kids in some field, wearing a badge that I didn’t believe in. They pay me 20 bucks, and I got out there, and f*cking say a bunch of words that are just in a field trying to play with a mascot. I was selling the Kool Aid I didn’t believe in from a developmental point of view,” he said.
But he still wanted to give back - and work soccer in somehow. At the time, DeMerit was living in a nice place in the mountains. He knew the outdoors. He loved it. His camp, he decided, would feature around 20 kids at a time, and not focus all that much on soccer. 

“No one can tell me that you can't be holistic in your experience and make it into a World Cup. I did. So, actually, you can. You can get a college degree. You can work nine jobs before you get a real job in playing professional soccer,” DeMerit said. 

So, yes, they would play. But over the course of his career, DeMerit saw so many people who didn’t make it that he wanted to help develop humans, not robots. He believed that such an approach might develop a few good footballers along the way. But the real focus was helping people become, well, people. DeMerit, in effect, was one of the lucky ones to break into the pro game. He figured his real calling was to help the ones who never got a shot. 

“I would get calls from broken teenagers around May 15, because that's when they all get released,” he said. “And then they ‘Oh, shit. I've spent my whole life being something and being told that I’m this, and all of that stuff has crashed down.' I saw a lot of that, and I wanted to help.”

His camps, then, are anything but conventional. It is not uncommon to see NHL stars helicopter into his yard and talk to 16-year-old soccer players about their lives. He has invited chefs, tattoo artists, business people, and fitness people. There are no phones allowed. Many of the kids are flown in for free. 

“I get a First Nations kid, a Chinese kid, an inner city kid, all in one place, around the bonfire in the middle of nowhere with no signal,” DeMerit said. “We get their attention. We practice. We’re with all these people, they can Google and follow online. These kids that think they're soccer players, but really know that they're not going to be, are now practicing soft skills with a bunch of other pros.” 

Put more simply? 

“We don’t teach skill set. We teach mindset,” he said.

The latest pursuit? An app. And yes, everyone has an app or a podcast. This one is called RISExSHINE, and it, in effect, gamifies resilience, leadership and mental fitness. He has invited numerous professionals in their respective fields to build “profiles” about their relative strengths and weaknesses. There are no pictures, comments or likes. In effect, young footballers are encouraged to think about what they really have, rather than what they look like. 

“You have the community, which is like masterclass people, those are the mentors. So you're learning from the community while learning about yourself,” DeMerit explained. “It creates a real social relationship connectivity, because you're connecting to yourself, but you're also gaining these emotions, or you're gaining these soft skill inspirations.” 

EA has already signed on. They have pitched to Borussia Dortmund. Others will follow, DeMerit believes. Right now, the app is invite only. There will be expansion. And he hopes that, maybe in a small way, he can change lives. 

“Most mental health starts with trying to be like somebody else. When you understand you've done the work, you've put yourself in adverse situations to build character, and you've learned how to show up for yourself,” DeMerit said. “It's incredible how you can live in this world with peace and humility and happiness.”

Of course, DeMerit will forever be associated with professional soccer. He doesn’t want to change that. He showed up at TST last year. He will be forever associated with a number of hard nosed USMNT stars who consistently punched above their weight in major tournaments. He knows that his generation differs radically from the one that has now replaced it. 

“We had to put ourselves in adverse situations. If you look across the roster, there was a laundry list of different characters. Our 2010 team, you had a bunch of renegades from a bunch of different places,” DeMerit said. “I don’t see those kinds of characters anymore.” 

That might hold them back, he speculated. But success, in some form, is vital. 

“Success, especially as an American, is relevant to winning. Americans aren't going to look at a score and be like, ‘Oh well, they tried really hard today!’ That's not how Americans are built,” he said. 

DeMerit will be there in Vancouver, promoting his app and curating on-the-ground experiences. The specifics are yet to be officially announced, but it involves sprinting, denim, DJ sets and a warehouse. If that sounds absurd, that’s because it is. 

But for the USMNT’s most puzzling character, it’s perfect.