Brandon Hill Talks Nashville SC’s Growing Community Support & Outreach Initiatives [Interview]

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Brandon Hill. Photo: Courtesy of Nashville SC

Three years into its birth as an MLS club, Nashville Soccer Club has grown to become an extremely popular team, as well as a successful one on the pitch.

But, like many sport teams, the community service and impact it can have on a city is equally as important. Nashville SC Head of Community Engagement Brandon Hill has been leading these initiatives for the club since day one. A product of the James Cayce Homes and graduate of both TSU and Vanderbilt University, Hill has worked in the community outreach world his entire career.

“My first job out of high school was working at the community center in my old neighborhood,” Hill shares in an interview with The Sports Credential. “I was 17 and a business major, but I really fell in love with community work. I’ve done nothing but but community work ever since.”

Hill spent some time in Atlanta working for rapper Usher‘s New Look Foundation before returning to Nashville to receive his masters degree from Vanderbilt. He was working at the mayor’s office when he heard about Nashville SC’s move to MLS and the push and engagement made by so many members of the Nashville community.

NSC fans. Photo: Courtesy of Nashville SC

“I learned about the Nashville Soccer Club from my good friend Marcus Whitney, and I really was interested in how we could use the soccer club as another one of the amazing resources for community engagement in the city,” he explains. “I got to meet Ian Ayre [Nashville SC CEO] as a result of chatting with Marcus about it, Ian and I hit it off and talked a lot about some of the things we could do utilizing soccer to help make the city a more amazing place.

“About eight or nine months later, they reached out and told me about this role. I never wanted to work in sports, but for over 20 years, I just worked in a number of community engagement settings and I really believed very passionately about the possibilities and the potential of soccer to help advance a lot of our goals that we have in Nashville as a city and a lot of our neighborhoods and communities.”

Hill saw the opportunity to reach more people in the Nashville community through the congregation of the soccer club. With international players of different backgrounds and nationalities and the impact the sport has on fans all different walks of life, he saw the organization, owned by Middle Tennessee native John Ingram, as a way to reach Nashvillians like he’s done before.

“There are very few things in the world that brings people together like music and sports,” Hill notes. “It just so happens that in Nashville we have both of those things and large amounts of them. Music is kind of a no brainer, right? We can go back forever to talk about Nashville’s connection with music, but sports is still fairly new. The Titans and the Preds got here in the late 1990’s, and this is just kind of a prime time for a sport like soccer.”

Nashville SC supporter group, The Mixtape 615, hosting a Juneteenth community watch party with in 2021. Photo: Courtesy of Nashville SC

He continues, “Due to the accessibility, the diversity and a communal aspect of it, it’s such a perfect sport for this time and our city’s progression. More than any politician or any particular cause, sports is an arena where everyone comes together, and they’re a part of the same team. So, in turn, for a person like me, who’s really invested in community work, community work is also built on how can we get everyone that’s a part of the community at the table together as part of the same team to help move us forward. I really just understood that sports is just an amazing vehicle.”

From the beginning, the club has made community service and engagement one of its top priorities, getting the word out that Nashville SC isn’t just a soccer team but a new organization that is for the community.

“Within about three months of the club’s launch, we had engaged something like 50 to 60 different community organizations and tied them into our inaugural match,” Hill recalls. “We really just started from from day one introducing ourselves and trying to be engaged with our community partners. We asked them, “‘hat are the priorities that you’re working on in the community? What do you think are the big issues? What’s the best way that we can be a resource and be of assistance here?’ That’s really what’s driven our approach from day one, is really being offensive to the community’s needs.”

Pride Night 2022. Photo: Courtesy of Nashville SC

Hill has been instrumental, along with the NSC organization, to being one of the most accessible and inclusive sports teams in the city, hosting Juneteenth Night as well as Pride Night for a second straight year. Both nights were full of festivities and events that specifically celebrated both the LGBTQ+ and African American communities. Pride Month was also a big month for Hill and the club as it continuously supported and voiced advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community and the Nashville LGBT Chamber.

Both nights featured musical artists and special guests from the respective communities to bring everyone in on the celebrations.

Soccer is the most popular sport in almost every Spanish speaking country and Davidson County’s demographic is made up of 10.6 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census. In 1990, the Hispanic and Latino communities were at 0.9 percent.

Nashville SC’s fanbase is extremely diverse and has supporter groups that are Latino run, such as La Brigada de Oro. The club will be hosting a Hispanic Heritage night at GEODIS Park towards the end of the MLS season in September.

It’s extremely important for both Hill and the club to reach as many communities as possible and connect everyone that calls Nashville home. At the beginning of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, MLS and Nashville SC’s inaugural season was postponed, and many Nashvillians were suffering with grocery store shortages and layoffs, as well as those suffering from the illness. The club took action and got involved to help those in need during these unprecedented times.

Members of the La Brigada de Oro supporters group. Photo: Courtesy of Nashville SC

“Our very first game was on February 29, 2020, and that morning we were so excited to get started,” Hill shares. “Then two days after our first game, a tornado disaster in Nashville and Middle Tennessee hit, and then two weeks later the pandemic started. We had all these amazing plans that just got put on pause through the pandemic. We started off our first year–or really our first two years–just trying to be responsive to what the communities said they needed. Instead of us just doing what we thought made the most sense and trying to replicate things we’ve seen in other MLS markets and cities, we wanted it to be true to the needs of Nashville.”

Hill and the club partnered with Fat Bottom Brewery and the National Food Project to help provide meals to displaced workers working in the hospitality industry. They also partnered with Metro Schools to help kids in the community during at-home learning. They partnered with Pencil to promote a program called Kickstarter Reading that helps students to stay on track of their literacy goals. This was something that the community expressed a need for to the club, Hill explained.

General Manager Mike Jacobs signing a Special Olympics of Tennessee athlete to a contract at SOTN event. Photo: Courtesy of Nashville SC

The club has gone on to help and connect many different organizations in Nashville, including the Special Olympics of Tennessee, the National Museum of African American Music and its Greener Goals initiative where they’ve teamed up with MLS to help tackle environmental issues within the community.

As Nashville SC continues to grow alongside the city, Hill and the club will continue to reach as many people in the growing community.

“From the top all the way down, this was a club that was going to be committed to really drive a community change and using this club as another mechanism to make amazing things happen in the city,” Hill summed. “I never in a million years imagined that it would be in a sports organization, but it’s just been a beautiful fit. It’s been amazing and remarkable time so far. We’re having a lot of fun.”

Steven Boero
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