Amber Brooks is a defender who has played professional soccer all over the world for more than a decade. She was the first player signed by Dallas Trinity FC, whose home pitch will be the Cotton Bowl. Their first season in the upstart eight-team USL Super League kicks off this month.
Besides being the answer to a great sports trivia question, what does being the first-ever Dallas Trinity player mean to you? It’s really special. Full disclosure: I thought that I would be playing in the NWSL this year. I was a free agent, but, for whatever reason, teams weren’t interested in me. I’m toward the end of my career and had to reevaluate and see if playing was something I still wanted to do. My body feels great, and I still love competing. I still have it in me. The team announcing me as the first signing really made me feel valued. They see what I can contribute, and it makes me really excited about going to battle for the team.
The USL Super League season starts August 17, and your first home game is September 7. Are they going to have the air-conditioning at the Cotton Bowl working by then? I haven’t heard, but, honestly, I played four years in Houston, two seasons in South Australia. The heat doesn’t bother me. I know maybe for the fans it’s not the most fun, but I can promise it’ll be worth sitting and sweating if the air-conditioning is not working yet.
There’s no air-conditioning at the Cotton Bowl, Amber. I was kidding. I thought they were renovating it. The concourse maybe? I’m sorry. [laughs]
The Cotton Bowl is by far the largest of the USL venues. With 90,000 seats, are you worried about how many of them will be empty? No, it’s not a concern. Obviously, the club has to get as many butts in the seats as often as possible. As players, we’ll provide entertaining soccer. We have to understand that. But I think Dallas has been waiting for this moment. And from the players’ point of view, that grass is going to be the nicest surface. And it’s such a historic stadium. My fiancé played football for Auburn. He’s like, “Wait. You’re getting to play in the Cotton Bowl? I didn’t get to do that.”
News came out just recently that every match is going to be streamed on Peacock. How pumped are you? Thinking about it from the perspective of my family, like mostly my grandmas, it’s great. It’s one platform and so simple. When I heard the news, I immediately texted Amanda [Vandervort, USL Super League president] and was like, “Wow, well done.” I was part of the negotiation with the NWSL where it took nearly 10 years to get any type of decent TV deal. Off the bat to have Peacock? I think that’s massive.
You mentioned you played for the Houston Dash. Now that you’re in Dallas, are you prepared to absolutely hate Houston? No disrespect to the club and the fans, but I did not love Houston. We had to play a game in Dallas after Hurricane Harvey, in 2017. I was thinking, like, honestly, the club would be better off moving to Dallas. There’s way more fans. There’s more of a soccer culture. In all of my time there, I think maybe the most we ever got was 8,000 or 9,000 fans, and in our one game here, we got 12 or 13 on short notice.
They see what I can contribute, and it makes me really excited about going to battle for the team.
Tell me about your mother, Jean. She got you into the game? Both my parents played collegiately, but my mom, she played right after they’d passed Title IX, in 1972. She played at Ashland University, in Ohio. They didn’t have a women’s team, so they had to allow her to play on the men’s team. I have all these photos of her practicing, and the guys have their shirts off, and she’s obviously got her shirt on. And I’ve got older brothers who played. I got started at a young age. I was 4.
High socks or low? Low! I mean, it looks like I don’t have shin guards on. I wear about 4-inch shin guards at the side of my ankles. I cut my socks. That started in Houston. It’s too hot to have high socks. I feel like they were restricting my calves and making me cramp. So I hate shin guards, and I think they’re useless. Definitely low socks.
Instagram tells me you’ve got a dog and a man in a black cowboy hat. What’s the story on both? He’s an Australian labradoodle that we got when we were living there, at Henley Beach. So we named him Henley. He’ll be 5 in September. He’s an 85-pound fluff ball. The guy in the hat is my fiancé, Jay. We met through his sister when we were teammates for the Seattle Reign in 2015. He’s from Montana. His dad was a true cowboy. That’s his dad’s cowboy hat that he had refurbished. For our engagement, he got me a custom cowboy hat from Burns Cowboy Shop, in Utah. They do all the Yellowstone stuff. So I guess I’m a cowgirl now.
This story originally appeared in the August issue of D Magazine with the headline “Can She Kick It?” Write to timr@dmagazine.com.
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