CURRENTLY INTO

Random Interests

Soccer, Pokémon tournaments with my daughter, pickleball, genealogy, and a few things that resist easy labels.

All Washed Up

I played soccer all through high school, then life happened and I took a solid ten-plus years off before lacing back up. When I got back into it, I helped found a house team with a bunch of strangers who didn't know what to expect. I named us the Piedmont Pipers — a nod to Silicon Valley's Pied Piper and the Piedmont region we play in. The name stuck for years, and once the average age of our team was comfortably above the league average, we got new jerseys and renamed ourselves All Washed Up — a nod to our clean new look and our aging bodies.

We compete in the first division of the Metrolina Adult Soccer League — one step below Premier, out of eight total divisions. Each division has six teams of 20+ players, putting the whole league close to a thousand players on any given weekend. Full field 11v11, three refs, the works. It's as competitive as recreational soccer gets, and I love every minute of it.

Beyond the league I've dabbled in other formats. Sportslink's 7v7 is nice — smaller sides mean more touches on the ball, and weeknight games run shorter than a full 11v11. I've played pickup at Carolina Cosmic, though it's a bit of a drive. I even tried organizing my own pickup sessions at Matthews Sportsplex, closer to home. Some nights we'd get a great turnout; other nights just a handful. The logistics were a lot — renting the field, paying for the lights, collecting money to cover my costs. I just wanted to play. I was hoping someone would step up to help organize after a few sessions, but nobody did. Life got busy and I stopped hosting, but it's something I'd consider picking up again.

Metrolina Adult Soccer League

Get Some Game

It started with a birthday gift — a Pokémon deck for my daughter when she turned eight. We played together, got completely hooked, and it never stopped. When we found out there was an under-16 league at a local store called Get Some Game, we were in. We've been going almost every weekend since, Pokémon playlist running on the way there.

The format is great — she plays in the kids' bracket, I play with the adults, and afterward we sit down together and open whatever packs we won. The store owner, Ms. Mary, is a saint. She's kind, encouraging, and genuinely listens — even when my daughter is three layers deep into very specific Pokémon lore. That kind of patience means a lot.

There's something I've always loved about sitting down across a table to play a game of skill. In university I founded the Chess Dawgs, a chess club that turned out to be one of the better decisions of my life — it's how I met my wife. The game has evolved, but the feeling of a good match hasn't.

Get Some Game

Rama Swim & Racquet Club

Yes, I play pickleball — I know what that means culturally. But it started with the swim club, not a paddle. We joined Rama Swim & Racquet Club to take the kids swimming, and it turned out to be one of the better decisions we've made. It's where a lot of the families from our neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods end up, which makes it as much a social hub as anything else.

The membership also comes with access to six pickleball courts. Some of the neighborhood dads started playing and I got pulled in. What hooked me is that it's easy to pick up but hard to master — and somehow, even across very different skill levels, the games always end up competitive and fun. That's a rare combination.

Rama Swim & Racquet Club

Developing Legacy

My name is Patrick Graham — and I've spent years chasing the history behind that name. Located at patrickgraham.net, Developing Legacy is my family history website, an ongoing effort to trace and preserve not just the Graham line but all my ancestral lines, through census records, photographs, faded documents, and church archives. The research runs surprisingly deep: I've followed the Grahams from pre-Revolution North Carolina all the way back to the MacIlvernock Graham family in North Knapdale, Scotland. The further back I dig, the more stories I find worth preserving — soldiers, immigrants, and everyday people living through extraordinary moments in history.

patrickgraham.net