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Ben Sweat
Jersey Number: 22
Hometown: Palm Harbor, Florida
Position: Defender
Age: 29
Former Club: Inter Miami CF
Background
(Ben Sweat/Instagram)
On the same day that Austin FC secured four other players, including Julio Cascante, the team traded $100,000 in General Allocation Money to Inter Miami CF to bring Sweat to Austin.
Like his name implies, Sweat has put in real work to play at the level he's at today. He's been a part of three MLS teams so far, including two separate MLS Expansion teams, but he proved to be a bit of a late bloomer when it came to going pro.
Sweat first got experience at cracking a new team after spending two seasons in his home state with Inter Miami FC. Sweat was selected by the team as the first overall pick in the MLS Expansion Draft, where he played in 23 matches with the new MLS side, notching 20 starts and two assists to his roster.
Prior to his time in Miami, Sweat spent three seasons in the back line for NYCFC. The 6'2 defender served as a left back for the club in 81 matches, in which he scored one goal and tallied nine assists. During his time with NYCFC, he also played alongside Austin FC teammate Alex Ring.
Sweat was the 14th pick for the Columbus Crew in the 2014 SuperDraft, but it was several years before he cracked the MLS ceiling.
Before he went pro, Sweat played for NASL team the Tampa Bay Rowdies in 2015-16, where he made 23 starts. Sweat got his start near his hometown with 3-USL Pro side the Dayton Dutch Lions after being drafted by affiliate Columbus Crew SC in the 2014 MLS SuperDraft.
Sweat has also played in two matches for the US Men's National Team, including a friendly match against Colombia in Tampa Bay.
Before the big game, Sweat told U.S soccer it was a surreal moment to play for his country in his hometown.
"It's a special moment," Sweat said. "My first call up happens to be in my hometown. I've been emotional about it, and I'm excited for this opportunity."
With Austin FC
(Ben Sweat/Instagram)
As a solid left back, Sweat should be part of the starting lineup alongside fellow defenders Nick Lima and Matt Besler, although he could find competition in 32-year-old veteran Hector Jimenez. The 6'2 defender is one of the tallest of the team, and at 29, he's bringing experience as a starting left back in other MLS sides.
Because Sweat played for another MLS startup back in 2019, he also knows a thing or two about starting with a brand new team. His time with Inter Miami CF was marred by COVID, but Sweat said he brings his experience with a new team to the fledgling Austin FC program.
"Last year wasn't a normal season with COVID, so it was very difficult to have an expansion team," Sweat said. "But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and I can take that experience from Miami and what maybe Miami did really well or didn't do well and bring that here to Austin."
Sweat is coming off of a surgery in December but said he's recovered and better than ever after the long-overdue procedure. "I honestly feel better now than I have in recent years," he said. "I would say my fitness level is one of the best since when I was younger, and I'm excited to run without pain."
Sweat turns 30 this year, and he knows his years are numbered as a starting left back for an MLS side. That's why he's so motivated to win, and he hopes that Austin FC will become an underdog success story in their inaugural season.
"I want to win, and I think this is the place that's going to happen," Sweat said. "I think they've put together a culture already where everyone has bought in, (and) I think we're gonna have a lot of success here. I don't think an expansion team should go in and use that as an excuse."
Off the pitch
(Ben Sweat/Instagram)
A native English speaker, Sweat has used his experience working alongside Spanish-speaking teammates to pick up as much as possible. With his limited Spanish and years of experience at his side, Sweat works to be a positive role model for new players to the team. "I'm in a role now where I need to help the younger guys and and also have the ability to have a bigger voice and be more vocal on and off the field," he said.
Sweat is also a big proponent for the MLS said it could be a contender alongside the Premier League, the Bundesliga and other global giants in the next 5-10 years.
In a press conference Friday, Sweat said he sees a lot of homegrown and international players boosting the league's global footprint. "The MLS is a tough league," he said. "There's a lot of good players, it's growing, the player pool is getting bigger and better."
Soccer may come first, but fishing is a close second for Sweat. The Florida native is an avid angler and inshore fisherman. While he left the coast behind for the Texas Capitol, he still owns a fisherman's paradise, Twin Tails Outfitters, which specializes in fly fishing clothing and gear.
When moving to Austin, Sweat was accompanied by his wife, Inis Šišić, whom he married in 2018.
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Popular
As summer temperatures continue to increase, so does Austin's "Party Island"—a hundreds-strong army of kayakers and paddle boarders who gather each weekend in the middle of Lady Bird Lake.
Born from the pandemic, the swarm of paddleboarding partiers has continued to grow each summer and can be seen from the nearby Lamar Boulevard Bridge. And while "Party Island" certainly lives up to one half of its name, it's not actually an island at all: instead, it's located at a shallow sandbar near Lou Neff Point.
With beers, burgers from portable grills and even DJ turntables in hand, more friends and strangers continue to beat the heat in new ways at the distinct Austin hangout.
Video by Steven Joyner
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(Pexels)
If you are a committed, grunge-wearing resident of the Pacific Northwest, it is easy–almost automatic–to look at Texas as an extraordinarily dry, hot and culturally oppressive place that is better to avoid, especially in the summer. Our two granddaughters live with their parents in Portland.
Recently we decided to take the older girl, who is 15, to Dallas. Setting aside the summer heat, a Portlander can adjust to the vibes of Austin without effort. So let’s take Texas with all of its excesses straight up. Dallas, here we come.
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.