Teen athlete has nonprofit and interview show
Goalkeeper Brady Kryslewicz defends the net. Photos submitted
By Tom Victoria
Brady Krysiewicz rises by lifting others. Not only does the soccer star host an interview show, he started a cancer nonprofit.
But it all started with the sport for the talented goalie, who attends a soccer academy.
“I play in MLS (Major League Soccer) NEXT Academy for Sporting Kansas City's U15 team,” he said. “Usually to make it into an academy team in the MLS NEXT, you have to be offered a trial or try out for the team. At certain age groups, you can't just try out. You have to be sent direct emails and letting them know that they would like you to be a part of their team.”
Before Brady was 10, his ability was recognized.
“I was just 9 years old,” he said. “We received the email from multiple academies and one being Sporting of Kansas City. We went out for a trial for the first time and it went really well. I liked the environment, the coaches and all my teammates around me. Every few weeks, we just kept going back out there to train with the team, play some friendlies.”
Eventually, Brady’s family relocated.
“A few years ago, I moved there,” he said. “If you're looking to play in a big MLS NEXT Academy team or other MLS Academy teams like LA Galaxy, LAFC, Columbus Crew, other teams like that at this age where I am now, you'd have to be offered a trial. So it's a very competitive league. A lot of the players are very passionate about what we do because we're looking to reach our goals and become pros. It's a very amazing opportunity for kids my age to be a part of.”
Brady, 15, does miss his extended family, though.
“I moved halfway across the country from Virginia to Kansas City,” he said. “Only seeing my family over the summer and for Christmas time is very tough. I fortunately got to move here with my mom, dad and sister, but cousins, grandparents, uncles, aunts, it's tough not being able to see them as frequently as I would like.”
Brady also had to adjust to a new school.
“Having to switch schools was very difficult for me as well,” he said. “I was getting to the age where we were starting to become more social. I was in sixth grade once we moved. I was starting to create some good friendships with some people back in Virginia that I had to ultimately break because you can't really keep a friendship 14 hours away from each other. The biggest, hardest part for me was just that social part, not being able to see family and friends.”
Brady’s role on the field is difficult mentally.
“My favorite part about being a goalie is — it might sound a little weird — when people call us crazy,” he said. “No one on our teams are as brave as we are and are willing to step up and take the position that we have because most of the time if we get scored on, it's something that our teammates did wrong. But we always get blamed for it because we're the one that let the goal in, so it's a big mental game.”
Brady said goalies also have to be physically tough.
“Injuries are a massive part in playing it,” he said. “If you are able to fight past injuries and keep training, you have a great mental mindset.”
Brady explained goalies do much more than defend the net.
“There are so many things that go into goalkeeping now that didn't happen 30 years ago,” he said. “The position keeps evolving. We are the last line of defense, but we're also the first line of offense. Goalkeepers are using their feet much more and that we're always looking to play massive big passes all across the field. The sport, the position just keeps evolving, so that makes it even harder to play.”
But it’s all worth it to Brady.
“What I like about it personally is that moment when you make a big, big save in a game and your teammates all rush over to celebrate with you because you just saved them from conceding a goal,” he said. “That's my favorite part about it.”
Brady identified one of the most vulnerable spots for goalies.
“It would probably hurt most when you make a fingertip save and it just nicks your fingers, but it's going super fast,” he said. “You jam it a bit or it lands right on top of your knuckle and it jams it as well. Those are probably the worst. You get a ball to your private parts every once in a while and that's not fun either. You have to risk your body a lot because we have to make big high dive saves. We're having to jump off the ground, so landing hurts sometimes. But we've been taught how to roll out of the dive so we don't take as much of a fall.”
Brady doesn’t just keep his eyes on the ball.
“I usually like to play a little bit higher up the field to stay connected with my defense,” he said. “If they need to pass back with me, I'm ready to play with them. But usually, my focus is on the ball. Every once in a while, I look all around the field and see how my team is organized.”
Brady said the key to soccer is working as a team.
“Another big part of our position is communication,” he said. “If I see something that I feel like my teammates need to know that they can't see because the goalkeeper sees the whole field, I communicate that to them. Maybe there's an opposing teammate who's calling for the ball, and they're behind my teammate, so I'll be like, hey, look behind you, look behind you. He's calling for the ball. It's simple stuff like that that could also save your team as well.”
Brady said there’s one part of soccer he misses by defending the goal.
“The only part I miss about it is celebrating after scoring a goal,” he said. “That's really the only part I'd say I miss about it.”
Brady said communication with teammates helps him stay focused.
“It is very easy to get distracted,” he said. “If I'm really locked in, focused on the ball, the communication part helps your brain focus more on the game and what's going on in the game. Because if you stop your communication and you're hands on the hips, just standing there on the field, you start to look around a bit and you don't stay fully focused on the game.”
Brady explained why soccer is the sport in which he employs his athleticism.
“I've only played two other sports when I was really young,” he said. “Once I found a sport I liked, I stuck with it. I couldn't imagine myself playing anything else. I did snowboarding when I was really little and I was doing soccer and snowboarding at the same time. My parents were telling me I had to pick one so I could stay fully committed and get to be the best level I can at whatever sport I was playing. I definitely like soccer being how passionate we are as soccer players, screaming on the fields, making big celebrations after slide tackling our opponent or making a big save or scoring a goal.”
Brady has been playing soccer since he was a tyke.
“I'm pretty sure I was about 3 years old, so I was super young,” he said. “I kept doing both, switching out on the field, switching out in goalkeeper, seeing what I liked most at the time. But when I was 8 years old, I became a full-time goalkeeper and haven't played on the field since.”
Brady wasn’t satisfied with just excelling in athletics, he also wanted to make a difference in people’s lives.
“Keeper For a Cure is my nonprofit I started when I was 9 years old,” he said. “I ultimately just wanted to raise the money and awareness for breast cancer. It all started at a goalkeeper camp I went to back in 2018 when I was 8. The goalkeeper running the camp told us about how to use leadership skills on and off the field. I was super young and didn't know much about that, so I went to my dad and asked him what that meant. He was telling me how you can give back to your community to be a leader.”
Brady took to the concept.
“You can be a leader on your soccer team, your football team, and really, there's a leader in every part of your life that you are a part of,” he said. “That title called being a leader or a captain, that stuck out to me. Originally, I was going to raise $12 for breast cancer awareness for the Virginia Breast Cancer Foundation because I'm named after Tom Brady. We were going to raise $12 for his number 12.”
“This kept growing over and over again, and it keeps growing today.”
Brady presents a check from Keeper For a Cure.
Brady purposely set a modest goal.
“It was something small to start us out with because honestly, my parents and me as well didn't have much faith that starting this at such a young age, it was going to get very far,” he said. “We actually got to $12 overnight. And so we raised it to $87 for Rob Gronkowski. It took about a week, and we got there as well. So then we raised it to $1,200 for the 12 again, and we got there very fast.”
There’s no end in sight for Brady’s charity.
“This kept growing over and over again, and it keeps growing today,” he said. “I'm very happy. Keeper For a Cure is something I started very young, and I'm still very proud of today.”
Brady stays busy keeping the cause in the public eye.
“We do events at certain breweries, and we go to tailgates for the Kansas City Cauldron, who is a part of Sporting Kansas City,” he said. “They do tailgates. They have their own supporter section during the game. We have a little table set up when they're tailgating. There's little things that we pass out for free to spread the word. We have banners we tell people about, and at those events, we try to spread the word as much as possible.”
Brady selected cancer due to the disease running in the family.
“Two of my aunts had breast cancer and one of them had unfortunately died from it,” he said. “I was super sad about that. I didn't know her very well. Knowing the first little bit about her was that she had to suffer through having breast cancer was upsetting to me.”
Brady works with another organization.
“Now that we're in a much larger area than little Madison Heights, Virginia, and we're in Kansas City, we realize that there's much more organizations that look to help with people with all sorts of cancer varieties,” he said. “We're working with Gilda's Club right now and they offer support groups and they help people with cancer get back to their normal selves.”
As if playing soccer at an elite level and operating a nonprofit wasn’t enough, Brady hosts an online show.
“The Real Vs the Fake is something we had seen on TV,” he said. “There's a lot of examples of it used in our real life about how people think they always deserve stuff and how they do little work to try and reach it. But there's people out there that do multiple training sessions every day or going to work every day, giving their 110 percent, and they still wonder if they're being lazy. How much are you willing to give to get to where you want to be, if you want to get a promotion, be the number one keeper on your team, be the team captain, being a starter on whatever sport you play? You've got to put in the work.”
Brady already is an experienced host.
“I had a previous podcast called 10 Questions with the Pro,” he said. “I had interviewed pro goalkeepers throughout various leagues, some in the MLS, USL and NWSL. I would ask them usually the same questions and they would give me their opinion from a pro’s perspective. I was looking to show the audience what it was like to be a pro soccer player and the stuff they go through from day to day.”
Brady now focuses on youth.
“I enjoy this one as well because it's kids closer to my age so it's a little bit easier to relate with,” he said. “And we're also playing in the same league. I'm enjoying this one a lot as well because some of the people I've interviewed so far are people are I know and some are just people I've sent a quick message to that I've played maybe once or twice. So it's also getting to know people and spreading relationships all throughout the league that I play in.”
Brady prepares questions as well as formulates some during the interviews.
“When I do my podcast, I have a little list pulled up so I can look at the question real quick,” he said. “But I also pull from what they say. If they say something that I think is a really good point to highlight, I would ask them another question similar to that. From a previous interview, I had a kid, I was talking about how he's played in all these tournaments all across the world and different countries like Austria, Italy and places like that. I asked him what was the level like playing down there just to pull from him a little bit so it gives an in-depth description of what it was like through his path and career.”
Brady picks the best parts of an interview to show.
“What I post on social media is just short little clips from what actually happened in the whole entire interview,” he said. “So whatever we think sounds best, we clip it up, put a few pictures over top of it, write up a little bio for whatever platform we're posting it on and we just post it from there.”
Along with wanting to become a pro soccer player, Brady wants his nonprofit to keep growing.
“Another long-range goal that I have is to reach over $50,000 raised with Keeper For a Cure,” he said. “I know it's going to take a few years to accomplish because I think we're about we're getting pretty close to around $20,000. So we're inching closer and closer to that goal, which I think is going to be amazing once we accomplish one day.”
Brady also wants to achieve the top goal in U.S. soccer.
“Another goal of mine I have is to win SKC the MLS Cup,” he said. “That would be an amazing honor, being on the squad to win a cup with them because it's been a few years since we've done it, and I feel like that would be awesome to do that. Another would be to play minutes with the U.S. national team as a pro. They have U.S. youth national teams, which would be amazing to play with as well. If I get called up, I'll be super pumped to play for them.”
Brady stays motivated to play soccer, host a podcast and work on a nonprofit when many people including those much older than him wouldn’t attempt one of them.
“The way I stay motivated is I know somewhere out there, there's somebody that's out there working harder than me,” he said. “That's when I'm sitting down, eating, there's someone out there that's training and I'm not. I don't like that feeling, knowing that someone's out there getting better than me when I'm just sitting around. So something that keeps me motivated is I want to be the best. That's it. I just want to be the best. So I try to do as much as I can.”
Brady also finds inspiration from a loved one who left this earthly plane.
“Another thing that motivates me is my uncle,” he said. “I didn't get to know him much, but from what I knew of him, he was a great guy. The few games that I had before he passed away, he would call me, telling me good luck the night before. I keep that in the back of my mind to keep me motivated, to make him proud.”
Brady offered advice for aspiring goalies.
“If there's something you feel like you're struggling with, just keep working on it,” he said. “If there's any doubt, if there's any risks that you're unwilling to take, then it's probably not for you. It's hard to find really brave goalkeepers out there nowadays that are willing to do the most for their team, that are willing to sacrifice their body and that are willing to do whatever they need for their team. So if you're willing to take a hit or two, you're willing to get yelled at sometimes by coaches or teammates, or you're willing to take injuries, then I would definitely say that you should 100 percent take the risk.”
Brady said the work is worth it to play the position.
“Even if it doesn't work out, it's an amazing experience being a goalkeeper,” he said. “Because once you have that one save and you have all your teammates run over to you and you start celebrating, that one save sticks in your mind for a very long time. For me specifically, we went to a penalty shootout into the semifinals of an Eastern International Cup over spring break. I saved the last penalty for our team to move on to the finals. I ran over to the corner and I felt all my teammates gather up and we were all in a big old huddle.”
Brady also dispensed advice for those wanting to start a nonprofit.
“Through the highs and the lows, you just have to stay consistent with it because if you skip out on it for a year, it's hard to start back up,” he said. “If you're staying consistent with your social media posts and you keep spreading the word out there, for anyone that is doing any type of fundraiser, not even just a nonprofit, it's super important that you just keep spreading the word and telling as many people as you know when it creeps closer to that time whenever you're going to start the fundraiser again. With a nonprofit doing it for cancer diagnosis, we do it towards October for breast cancer and so we start to post a lot more.”
Brady said anyone wanting to interview people should take the plunge.
“It's an amazing experience for whoever you want to interview: movie actors, soccer players, sports athletes, anybody that you want to interview,” he said. “You're going to learn a lot from whoever you're interviewing and they're going to share their life experiences with you. It's really important that you're able to take in everything they're telling you and put it out there for your audience to see. But the main advice I would say is that you have to be willing to take in whatever the other person's opinions and perspectives are.”
Brady’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bk_skcgoalie/
Brady’s nonprofit: https://keeperforacure.com/