One Country, Four Players, One Team

Moorhead, Minn. --- One country. Four players. One team. 

Glance up and down the roster of the Concordia men's soccer team and that is what one will find. 

The quartet of Jesse Partee, Sage Thornbrugh, Joe Thomas and Trevor Carr all come from DODDS schools in Germany. (Thomas lists his hometown as Steilacoom, Washington).

They come to Concordia connected through each other. 

Partee was the first to come to Concordia four years ago on the Harry Brown Scholarship.

Partee was born in Sacramento, California, but in 1997 moved to Germany. While in his junior year at Vilseck High School, he heard about the scholarship being offered to students whose family had military backgrounds. 

After hearing about it in class, Partee was the only one who approached his teacher about the scholarship, and was the only one who came to Concordia the following fall.

Partee and Thornbrugh knew each other from high school. Partee did not begin attending Vilseck until his junior year. Once the team heard Partee played goalie, he began to become acclimated with the soccer team and Thornbrugh.

Of his first encounters with Partee, Thornbrugh smirked, "We needed a goalie, real bad."

Partee never even imagined Thornbrugh would come overseas, but one day during his first year head coach Ben Schneweis decided to try different recruiting trails.

Since it was Schneweis' first season none of the current players were his recruits. The team wasn't playing well and Partee exclaimed at his teammates, "You know what, I know a guy back in Germany who could beat all of you! Sage Thornbrugh."

Partee did not think anything of it at the time, but Schneweis approached him following practice. He wanted Thornbrugh's contact information. 

Thornbrugh was born in Claremore, Oklahoma. After a brief stint in Byers, Colorado, his mother moved him to Vilseck in search of a better paying teaching job. 

Soccer in Germany is much different than soccer in the states. In Germany, playing through the community on club teams is the more competitive season where you make a name for yourself – and Thornbrugh played on many of those teams. 

He never thought a collegiate soccer career was in store for him, but suddenly Schneweis was contacting him regularly and Thornbrugh was also granted the Harry Brown Scholarship. 

Thornbrugh had a large part in bringing Thomas and Carr to Concordia as well. 

Thomas spent one year at a small school named Ansbach High School. In that one year Thornbrugh and Thomas played in the Olympic Development Program together.
 
That was the only contact they had. But when Schneweis began probing Thornbrugh for more foreign recruits – Thomas' name popped in his mind. 

Thornbrugh had no idea what he was doing or where he was at, but upon instant messaging through Facebook, Thomas was hooked. He got in touch with Schneweis and came overseas for a visit. Thomas left campus a Cobber. 

Another DODDS player on the roster.

Trevor Carr is originally from San Diego, California. The son of a marine, his family moved to Okinawa, Japan where his father pursued a job as a computer contractor in the military.

The Carr family lived there for seven years before moving to Heidelberg, Germany in 2003. A couple years later in 2006, Carr and his family moved to Vilseck where he met Thornbrugh. 
For two years, the pair was together in the same classes and on the same soccer fields until the Carrs relocated to Alconbury, England. 

The family stayed there for a couple years before returning to Heidelberg for the rest of Trevor's high school career. 

Carr attended the University of Akron for his freshman year of college in hopes of playing soccer. Tryouts were not until the spring, but one would need a physical to try out. Carr had not been tested for sickle cell so he was not able to even try out. 

With a wry grin and a smile, Carr admits, "I also pledged into a fraternity, which may have not been my best choice."

With no drive for athletics or academics, Carr moved back to stay with his parents in Mainz, Germany where played for the club team Mainz-Hecthtsheim while taking online classes. 

In July of this year Carr and Thornbrugh were playing FIFA on the Xbox and were chatting online. Half jokingly, Carr asked Thornbrugh, "What if I came to Concordia to play?" Thornbrugh urged Carr to apply and in late July he did.

Schneweis got involved and a week before classes began Carr was on campus. He signed up for classes two days before the academic year began. Another Cobber. 

One scholarship brought these four student-athletes to Concordia. Only Partee and Thornbrugh are on the scholarship, but this is not a scholarship just for athletes. 

The scholarship is based on academics and need. If a student is enrolled in the DODD's program and is a good fit for the school academically, they qualify for the scholarship.

A Williston, North Dakota native, Harry Brown graduated from Concordia in 1967. He became a teacher and taught in Forest Lake, Minnesota for 10 years before he went overseas and coached basketball and taught math in Spain, Iceland, Turkey and Bahrain. Near the end of his career he was named the athletic director in Vilseck, Germany before he ended his career in Italy. In all, Brown spent nearly 30 years teaching overseas.

While overseas, Brown taught at DODDS affiliated schools (Department of Defense Dependents Schools) and wanted to find a way to benefit students to those schools.

There are six students that have come to Concordia on the Harry Brown Scholarship and they are all still here. Brown recently had lunch with five of them (one student is studying abroad in China) and is delighted to see they are comfortable here.

Brown was available for comment and said, "These kids deserve the opportunity to receive a good education and Concordia is a good fit for some of these kids. They represent all the kids I've taught over the course of the years."

Schneweis hopes the scholarship will create a pipeline to Concordia. Whether the prospective students participate in athletics is neither here nor there. 

"One of the reasons Mr. Brown created this scholarship was to give children of military personnel and graduates of DODDS schools an opportunity to attend a college such as Concordia," Schneweis said, "it has been a coincidence that some of the students on the scholarship also play soccer."

When Brown first created the scholarship he had no idea where it was going. 

"I'm just very pleased the kids I've been able to help out like the college and are thriving."

Written by Sports Information Intern Austin Hawkins