Note: The following appears in the Georgia Southern gameday football program
In 2015, Patrick Bunk-Andersen didn’t quite get it. Self-dubbed as “the international guy who came to win,” the crowd of 7,423 fans (second largest in Historic Riggs Field history and by far the biggest group he had ever played in front of) told him it was important, but he hadn’t bought in just yet.
But seeing the reaction of his teammates who understood the magnitude of that 3-0 “First Friday” victory over the South Carolina Gamecocks, he began to realize how special the moment was.
As someone who has always been loyal to the teams he’s played for, it wasn’t hard to get into it after that.
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Growing up in Hvidovre, Denmark, Bunk-Andersen started playing soccer when he was six years old for a local club team with a few friends. He quickly began to rise in the ranks of the youth system, and at 15, some of his friends moved on to the bigger team in Copenhagen. He, however, knew that wasn’t the right fit for him.
“I’ve always liked to be loyal to my friends and teams that I play for, and I had some really good coaches in my youth years at Hvidovre IF. I never really looked at getting away from there into anything bigger. I just wanted to play in the youth system and see how far I could make it with my local club.”
But once he aged out and became a senior in the European soccer framework, he had to decide what the future was going to look like. He graduated from his secondary school and was taking a gap year, and after a friend showed him a few videos of American college soccer, his interest was piqued.
“The combination of not really knowing what I wanted with school back home but definitely wanting to continue playing soccer…it was a really good match and a great opportunity to combine the things I actually wanted.”