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A Facebook post that piqued Olympic champion John Shuster’s curiosity six years ago has turned him into something of a two-sport entrepreneur. While at a curling competition in China in 2019, Shuster read the post from a friend who was looking for two more host families for players for Duluth FC, a pre-professional men’s soccer club. Shuster had no idea Duluth had a soccer team. But he did know that his wife, Sara, had a tremendous experience growing up when her family hosted foreign exchange students. The Shusters wanted to do something similar. Looks like we’re hosting soccer players, he told her. The comment was tongue-in-cheek, but one thing led to another. He returned home from China to not only reunite with Sara and sons Luke and Logan, but also to meet three houseguests for the summer — soccer players from England, Israel and the Netherlands. Duluth FC is made up of American and international players, many looking for a place to play in between college seasons. Similar to the Cape Cod League in baseball. The Shusters live in Superior, Wisconsin, which combined with Duluth five miles across the state line make up the Twin Ports. The Shusters continued to host players annually (save 2020 due to COVID) — about 12 in total, some multiple times, living from May through July in a guest room upstairs, an office converted to a bedroom on the main floor or in a bonus room in the basement. Since 2023, Shuster has also been a co-owner of Duluth FC with Alex Giuliani. The previous owner and founder, Timothy Sas, had to move to Minneapolis to serve as a priest. When Sas reached out to the host families to gauge interest in transferring ownership, Shuster felt moved. “We’re really into community and service, and the team’s mission is based on that community,” he said. Matches draw up to 1,000 fans, a large portion of those families with children. The Shusters’ boys, now 12 and 10 years old, play youth soccer, too. Shuster sees that vision of community when Luke and Logan kick the ball around in their side yard with Duluth FC players from places like Brazil, Ireland and Tennessee. As a co-owner, Shuster puts his experience to use: a business marketing degree from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, plus years of handling travel and logistics for his own curling team. It’s serendipitous that Shuster is on his second go-round watching “Ted Lasso,” the series about a college football coach who is thrown into managing an English soccer club. Shuster sees a bit of his own story in that of the sometimes maligned Lasso. In Shuster’s first Olympics as a team skip (or leader) in 2010, he was briefly benched after a poor start to the tournament. After another rough Olympics in 2014, he was cut from the national team. Then he formed a team playfully labeled “rejects,” made it back to the Olympics in 2018 and went from a 2-4 start to win the last five games and the first gold medal in U.S. curling history. “A lot of the things that Ted has went through, I went through on a little different basis,” Shuster said. “As a curler and as the face of curling and people spewing hate at you that don’t know really anything other than you’re the guy on their favorite team who’s failing.” Shuster noted the darts scene from the eighth episode of season one. “Be curious, not judgmental,” was Lasso’s line. “What other people thought of you had nothing to do with you, and to be honest, that was probably part of my transformation in 2018 where I had that giant leap to not only win gold, but to be a better player and teammate and person since then,” he said. “I’ve kind of never went back.” The Shusters are so immersed in their new sport — Sara is also president of the Superior Soccer Association, which handles spring, summer and fall rec leagues — that he spends more time on soccer than he does curling. That balance will change as the Milan Cortina Games approach. Shuster bids for an American record-tying sixth Winter Games appearance in 2026 — in the same country where he debuted at the Olympics in 2006. To get back to Italy, the 42-year-old Shuster’s team must win the Olympic Trials in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, from Nov. 11-16. Then the team — Shuster, along with Matt Hamilton, Chris Plys and Colin Hufman — must place in the top two of a last-chance international qualification tournament in December. This past February, Shuster’s team was beaten for a national championship for the first time in nine years. But at an event in August, Shuster went 4-0 against both younger teams that he lost to at nationals. “People might think, based on last year’s nationals, we’re the underdog, but we’re feeling like we’re in the best place we possibly could be going in,” he said. Shuster doesn’t know how much longer he will co-own Duluth FC. If he stays involved in sports after retiring from competition, it will be in curling — sharing his knowledge with the next generation. It’s a skill Shuster is already honing in soccer. “I really felt that becoming an owner, as opposed to a host family, now, all of a sudden, every player on the team I knew on a first-name basis,” Shuster said. “I was able to have conversations about my history in sports. The things that I’ve been able to pass to the kids living in my house that we’ve been hosting, I’ve been able to guide and be a mentor to everybody on our team through my experiences in sport.”
