American soccer fans had plenty of good feelings to take away from Tuesday’s 4-0 Hex-clinching victory over Trinidad & Tobago in Jacksonville, Florida, but one of the best came from a pregame moment captured on video.
In it, a Navy ensign and his mother – who both happen to be longtime US Soccer fans – reunited amidst the already-festive setting of an American Outlaws' pregame tailgate party.
Evan Jones, a 28-year-old from Gainesville, Florida, who is currently stationed aboard the USS Blue Ridge in Yokosuka, Japan, made plans to take one final leave back to his Florida home before his current tour of duty ends in January 2018. The USMNT game in Jacksonville was during one of the anchor dates for his trip, and his mom, 58-year-old psychiatrist Evelyn Jones, had mentioned the match when he called her and told her he’d be coming home to visit in September.
But rather than tell her he would attend the game, he figured he would surprise her.
“I told her they wouldn’t let me come back until the 10th, then I let my dad in on what I was planning,” he said. “Eventually, I let pretty much everyone who wouldn’t snitch in on it.”
Evan started going to US games in 2008, and invited his mom – whose soccer fandom dates back to Tampa Bay Rowdies games in the 1970s – to join him at US men’s and women’s games a year later after he became an original member of American Outlaws’ Tampa chapter. She enjoyed it, so much so that she is currently a card-carrying member of the Gainesville chapter, and has driven up to 14 hours round-trip in a single day to attend US matches.
This week in Jacksonville, Evan made an appearance at the AO Night Before party, which his mom didn’t attend “because it was a work night." He had enough of a resemblance to US sensation Christian Pulisic that he says FOX commentator Alexi Lalas asked him, “Hey, Christian, why are you drinking a beer the night before a game?”
To conceal his identity at the pregame tailgate, Evan wore a bandana over his face until his friend and fellow AO member, Jake Sillick, got a camera rolling to capture the reunion video that has since gone viral on the internet.
“I know that military-coming-home videos are popular, so I’m not so surprised that it’s getting around,” Evan said. “But it was really just a thing we did for my mom. But she’s been sending it around to family and friends. She’s over the moon about it.”
Sillick also noted that Evan’s resemblance to Pulisic probably isn’t hurting.
“He likes to surprise me,” Evelyn said, noting that Evan also came home a day early from a-year-and-a-half stay in China several years ago by dropping into her office unexpectedly. “At first, I did a double take, wondering if it was real, wondering what was happening. And then I realized it was him, and all I could do was squeal.”
Like her son, Evelyn is not surprised that the video has been shared so frequently. She just never expected herself to be part of it.
"You see videos like that go viral," she said, "but you never think it’ll be you in one of them.”
