The Olympics and Duluth FC: John Shuster Does It All
By Sean Maslin/NPSL.com
Running a high-level soccer team is not an easy task. But running a high-level soccer team while also competing as an Olympian and being a husband and father of two requires an entirely different level of athlete. Yet, John Shuster manages all three competing as an Olympic gold medalist in curling while co-owning Duluth FC and running the kids around to baseball tournaments in the summer months.
Much like many of the athletes in Paris, in Duluth, and across the world Shuster’s love of curling came from his parents. His father Tom was a league curler and John would hang around the curling club members growing up, watching games on Thursday nights. He first tried the game at the age of 12 and as he put it, “I instantly took a liking to it.”
An admitted lover of all sports, curling offered something different from other athletic endeavors. “There is just something about throwing a curling rock, something magical about it that caught my attention from day one.”
That passion and drive led Shuster to the top of the curling game initially with Team Fenson and then with his own curling group, Team Shuster. In the first Olympic trials for curling in 2005, Shuster and Team Fenson finished first in qualifying booking a spot in the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics. They made the most of their initial chance at Olympic glory, earning a bronze medal. He reached the top in 2018, winning gold in 2018 in Pyeongchang. The five-time Olympian has also competed in eleven world championships and was one of the flag bearers for the United States in the Beijing 2022 Games.
While having received multiple accolades in curling throughout the years, he still remembers his first experience competing in the Olympics in 2006.
“It was interesting because that year we won the U.S. Olympic Trials and then we had to go to the world championships,” he said. “I was young and I had the belief that I would get there so I don’t think it hit me until I stepped foot through the door of the opening ceremonies. That is where it got real and that’s where it gets insane.”
The Olympics are more than just the games themselves. Bringing thousands of athletes from across the world and the sporting landscape has led to an atmosphere like none other, from the opening ceremonies to the events themselves to the environment around the Olympic Village.
“In 2010, I legit hung out with [U.S. Hockey’s and NHL players] Zach Parise and Jamie Langenbrunner, who were with the men’s team at the time,” he said “They were playing cribbage and I was you know, sitting there getting to know these guys on it. Jamie is from the area by Duluth here as well.”
For Shuster, one of those chance encounters included Alexander Ovechkin (yes that Alexander Ovechkin), a cherry pie, and a bus ride.
“In Sochi, Alex Ovechkin boarded the bus at the first stop for some reason, and one of his teammates handed him a cherry pie and he had a bright white, Russia jacket on,” he said. “He ripped this cherry pie out of its thing and took a bite and the cherry pie filling went all over his credential on his jacket. He didn’t realize it until he got done and then one of his teammates saw it on his jacket and pointed it out to him in Russian. Then he went and he licked the pie filling off of his credential and he looked at me and saw I had seen the whole thing and he said to me ‘sh– happens’. I was sitting two and a half feet away from him because he was standing in the middle of the aisle. That was one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me.”
“I’ve always cared so much,” he added. “I thought it’d be a super emotional experience on the podium but to win we had to completely cut emotion out of it. It was kind of exciting but it wasn’t nearly as emotional as it probably should have been for me but that was the only way we could have gone through it.”
That passion also applies to Duluth FC, purchasing a stake in the club alongside fellow co-owner Alex Giuliani in 2022. Duluth just wrapped up a strong North Conference season in which they finished 7-1-4 on 22 points. They placed second in the regular season and made it to the NPSL National Semifinals where they fell to the eventual NPSL National Champion El Farolito.
Aside from watching a few World Cup matches through the years, Shuster is a recent convert to the game but became involved with the game initially by hosting players who lived outside of Duluth.
“A friend of ours posted that they’re looking for host families for our players because that’s how we do it here,” he said. “My wife’s family had foreign exchange students growing up in her household. I was competing in China at the time when I saw this message on Facebook that [Duluth] was looking for host families. So, I talked my wife and said, looks like we’re going to have some soccer players [Laughs]. And by the time I got home from China, we’ll get three of them living in her house.”
“We started going to games and getting to know these guys and realized what a special thing we had in town that we never even knew existed and we had been a team that had been in existence for six years,” Shuster elaborated. “At that point, the previous owner was looking to sell. We knew how important the team was to our community, and we wanted that connection to stay here. Our other owner [Alex] is a big soccer from around our town and like myself he knew how much this team meant to our community. Since then, we have continued to build on our team’s mission to bring great soccer to our community from the top down to the lowest youth levels.”
That love of the Olympics – both summer and winter – is something that Shuster still carries to this day. Much like many families across the world right now, the Shuster family is avidly following all of the action in Paris.
“I absolutely love the Summer Olympics,” he said. “Both of my kids have become competitive swimmers, and my wife was a swimmer and a diving coach. We are definitely catching a lot of swimming and actually, as a family, we were able to go to the women’s gymnastics Olympics trials when they were held in Minnesota last month. Seeing the athletes in person and being there when they name the team, I think we felt a big connection to them too.”
Curling may be the sport with which he has earned an Olympic gold medal but Shuster certainly relates to the work that Duluth’s athletes are putting in to play at the highest levels. Through his time has owner and as a host family Shuster has talked to players about what it takes to become an elite level athlete.
“If soccer is your dream, put everything you have into it and don’t short yourself,” he said. “See it all the way through. We see all these guys with the talent that they have and you realize that it’s right up there with what we’re watching and you know in the MLS and in these professional leagues. The talent is definitely there with a lot of these guys all they need is one opportunity. If you get that opportunity and you seize it, see it through, and enjoy doing it. I mean that’s it for me. As an aspiring Olympic curler that was my belief that I would be there and since then any opportunity that I’ve had to maximize that potential in myself and my teammates.”
Photo Credit: Harrison Law/Duluth FC and USA Curling/Bob Weder
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