How one volunteer is making the Commanders season extra fun
Julie Garcia has a few topics in mind for Main Street’s Commanders Fan Club meeting on August 21. She wants to talk about the team’s preseason games, the starting lineup, and her recent trip to training camp. “If we have time for it all,” she says.
The Commanders club is new to Main Street, something Julie came up with after filling in one night on The Huddle, Main Street’s monthly sports talk program. The club meets twice a month on Zoom and offers a welcoming community where you can share your passion for football and connect with fellow fans—fans like Julie, who has Commanders pajamas and likes to analyze the offensive line. “My mom truly is the perfect person to run this club,” says Julie’s daughter, Isabel, Main Street’s director of programming. “With her knowledge of all things Commanders and her enthusiasm for the game, I know she’ll make every meeting engaging and fun.”
Julie surprised everyone when she became a Commanders fan last season. She was never into sports—no interest at all—until she started watching The Last Dance, a documentary about the rise of Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls. She’d lived in Chicago in the ’90s and felt sad that she didn’t know the story. “That would’ve been an exciting thing to be a part of—the success and the drama and the ups and downs,” she says. When she heard Dan Snyder was selling the Commanders, she thought, this could be my moment. “I wanted to make up for the fact that I missed out on all of the excitement and the fun around the Bulls,” she says. “I knew we’d be building a team and hiring a great staff and we had great draft picks—so I decided to hop on board.”
In her first season as a fan, she went to every home game, watched YouTube videos about the team, and got into podcasts. “It is intellectually interesting, learning about the offense, learning about the defense,” says Julie, a lawyer and teacher. “It is an engaging pastime, for sure.”
She’s excited for Sunday, September 8 at 4:30pm, when Main Street is hosting a watch party for the Commanders first regular season game. “I’m looking forward to watching with a group that is as enthusiastic as I am,” Julie says. “It’s definitely more fun to watch together.”
