It wasn’t his famous, soccer-playing father that gave dynamic Sounders right back Kelvin Leerdam his first taste of the sport.
That fell to his mother, Juliette, a primary school teacher who raised young Kelvin mostly on her own in their native Suriname until he was 2, then left him with his grandparents while she sought a better life overseas. Her family in that little-known, former Dutch colony on South America’s northeast coast was full of good soccer players and she had been one of them.
So, when Leerdam began kicking a ball around as a toddler, she figured more than youthful exuberance was at work and would try to encourage him during her yearly visits back to see him.