October 1, 2024 – United Soccer League Championship (USL)
Tampa Bay Rowdies News Release
One of Aaron Guillen’s earliest sports memories from his childhood isn’t playing soccer. Guillen, the youngest of four boys, instead followed in the footsteps of his brothers and gave baseball a shot.
Fortunately for Rowdies fans, baseball did not turn out to be Guillen’s calling.
“I tried… but playing baseball wasn’t very exciting for me,” recalls Guillen. “I guess I was looking for something more active. No one in my family had played soccer, but we used to watch soccer as a family at home all the time. I have a lot of memories of watching the Mexican league matches together as a family. For whatever reason, I thought soccer looked a lot more fun to me.”
It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise for Guillen’s parents to see their son show an interest in soccer. The family emigrated from Mexico to the United States when Guillen was three years old, settling in El Paso, Texas. There were several cultural similarities between their life in Mexico and the Texas border town, which had a budding youth soccer scene.
“It felt like soccer was always around when I was a kid,” says Guillen. “Any park you would go to, you would see kids playing soccer that you could play with. Sports seemed like a big thing in El Paso in general, but soccer always felt like the most popular sport in the community. That’s really how my love of the game started, just going out there and playing with other kids.”
From early in his youth soccer career, Guillen knew he wanted nothing more than to be a professional soccer player. His parents were supportive from the start, ensuring their son was able to attend every practice, every tryout, every tournament somehow, someway. Youth soccer can be a costly venture, especially the higher up the ranks you progress.
“Since I started playing soccer, my parents always gave me the support to play in all the tournaments that I was invited to,” says Guillen. “It’s not cheap to play club soccer in the United States. Honestly, to this day I don’t know how my parents did what they did, raising all four of us and supporting my dream. It was a family of six with just one income. It was tough. But I always felt like I had exactly what I needed thanks to them. I can’t say enough how lucky I am to have had my parents guiding me.”
Guillen was a standout for the Coronado High School soccer team in El Paso, earning All-City Defensive Player of the Year honors from the El…