As a boy growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1990s, Eric Choi remembers his parents trundling him off to soccer games at Cal State Northridge. But the attraction wasn’t so much the sport as it was one player, defender Ron Lou.
“I definitely didn’t have an Asian role model close by. And he was Asian, right?,” Choi said. “So my family, we claimed him.”
Choi not only claimed Lou, he followed him, first to Northridge, where he earned a degree in journalism, then into soccer, where he has coached the El Camino Real High girls’ team into a perennial powerhouse.