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There are few people who know Pacific FC quite like Josh Heard.
He’s been with the club since its earliest days, joining for the 2020 Island Games before becoming a fixture in the Tridents lineup, a captain in the locker room, and more recently, a member of the club’s front office.
Six years later, Heard wears a lot of hats around the club.
“I’m on the field. I’m a leader in the locker room,” Heard said. “Then I also do a little part-time work with you guys up here. I work on the sales side of the club in the afternoons.”
For Heard, the opportunity to see the club from both sides has given him a different perspective on the sport he has spent most of his life playing.
“I really care about the sport, this club, and soccer in general in Canada,” he said. “So it’s kind of growing the game from a different role, more on the business side of things, which has been fun and exciting to be a part of.”
But before he was a professional footballer, before he was a Pacific FC captain and before he was selling tickets from the club office, Heard was simply a kid from Victoria who loved playing soccer.
And, according to him, he wasn’t particularly good at it to start off with.
A Kid Who Couldn’t Sit Still
Heard grew up playing multiple sports, including basketball, rugby, and lacrosse, but soccer quickly became the one that captured his attention.
He remembers being introduced to the game after his family moved to Vancouver Island from Wales when he was just four years old, with his parents signing him up for soccer as a way to help him make friends.
His first season didn’t exactly suggest a future in professional football. “I was dreadful,” Heard said. “We’d switch sides and I would score on my own goal because I just wasn’t thinking.”
What he lacked in ability, however, he quickly made up for with enthusiasm.
“I loved it,” he said.
That enthusiasm continued to grow as Heard moved through youth soccer and eventually attended Reynolds Secondary School, where he joined the school’s soccer program.
For Heard, playing every day alongside the same group of friends helped him make soccer more than just a sport.
“I was really obsessed from the beginning,” he said. “I’m not really sure why. I had family that liked the game, and when I was younger they kind of got me into it, but I definitely had an edge where I felt really driven at those ages.”
That drive eventually took him beyond Vancouver Island
Finding a Path
When Heard was growing up, the pathway to professional soccer in Canada looked very different.
There was no Canadian Premier League. There was no Northern Super League. For young players on Vancouver Island, the route to professional soccer often meant leaving home. And lucky enough, Heard found his opportunity in the United States.
After playing for the Victoria Highlanders, he attended a showcase in Washington State, where he caught the attention of University of Washington coaches, and the circumstances were almost perfect.
The Sounders Academy centre-backs Heard was playing against were both committed to Washington. Heard put together a strong performance, scoring twice against them.
“A few weeks later, I got a call from them and they asked me to come down for a visit,” he said.
He eventually earned a scholarship and moved to Seattle at just 17 years old. It was the beginning of a four-year journey that would help shape both the player and person he would become.
More Than a Player
Heard studied communications at the University of Washington, although one of his favourite classroom memories might have less to do with his degree and more to do with an unexpected elective.
“I took Swahili,” he said. When asked what he remembered from the class, Heard had a simple answer. “Hujambo.”
The university experience, however, gave Heard much more than a degree.
On the pitch, Washington became one of the top programs in the country. During Heard’s time there, the team won the Pac-12, reached the Elite Eight twice and spent time ranked No. 1 nationally.
But Heard believes the most important part of those four years was the development that happened away from the field.
“When I was 17, I maybe had the ability to go play professionally, but I was not ready whatsoever,” he said. “Physically, all of it. I had a lot maturity development to do.” The Washington coaching staff helped provide that development. “They did such a good job of building the person, the dude, and the player,’” Heard said.
That experience helped him prepare for the next stage of his career.
From the USL to Austria
After university, Heard spent two seasons with the Philadelphia Union’s USL team before joining Real Salt Lake’s USL side for another two years.
Then came an opportunity overseas.
Heard joined a new project in Austria, where investors had taken over a club with ambitions of eventually reaching the country’s top division.
Unfortunately, shortly after that opportunity became reality, the world changed.
COVID-19 brought the project to a halt, while Heard also found himself dealing with an expiring visa and an uncertain future.
Eventually, he found himself in Amsterdam Airport, calling his parents.
“I was like, ‘Hey, can I just come home? I don’t really have anywhere to go right now,’” Heard recalled.
He returned to Victoria unsure of what would come next, until Pacific FC called.
“Basically two weeks later was the Island Games.”
And just like that, his career had come full circle.
Coming Home
Heard had grown up playing soccer on Vancouver Island. He had played with the Highlanders as a teenager, left home to pursue his career, and travelled across the United States and Europe.
Now, he was back.
Only this time, there was a professional team in his hometown.
“When I came back, I got to cross paths with these guys again and work with them again,” Heard said of former teammates and coaches he had known earlier in his career.
“It’s very rare in football that you get to do that.”
That connection to home has remained a defining part of Heard’s relationship with Pacific FC.
The club wasn’t around when he was a kid. But now, younger players on Vancouver Island have something Heard didn’t have growing up: a professional team they can watch, support and aspire to play for.
“Having the CPL, the NSL, having them all provide a clear path for boys and girls who are growing up playing for a club, it’s huge,” Heard said. “There’s a path to go play professionally in my own country.”
It’s something Heard doesn’t take for granted.
He often finds himself talking to Pacific’s younger players alongside fellow veteran, Sean Melvin, joking that they sound like the stereotypical older generation.
“You guys, we didn’t have this when we were younger,” Heard laughed.
But underneath the joke is genuine appreciation.
“You guys don’t know how good you get it.”
Life Beyond the Pitch
For all the time Heard has spent on a soccer field, football isn’t the only thing that defines him.
Away from the club, Heard and his wife, Grecia, enjoy spending time outdoors, heading to the beach, camping and exploring Vancouver Island.
He also has picked up a new hobby, cooking. “I really like it. I don’t think I’m that great at it,” Heard said. His latest accomplishment? Homemade pesto. But the next step, according to Heard, might be growing his own basil.
For someone who has spent most of his life focused on football, those smaller parts of life have become increasingly important.
Heard admits he has thought about what life might look like when his playing career eventually ends, but he doesn’t have the perfect answer.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think about that a lot.”
But there is one thing he knows for certain. “I want to stay in the game 100%.”
Whether that eventually means working in communications, sales, coaching or another part of the sport, Heard wants football to remain part of his life.
“I really believe in the sport and what it does for people,” he said. “Whatever happens, if I’m not playing, I want to be involved with it. I want it to be in my life forever.”
Showing Up
While Heard may not know exactly what his future will look like, he knows the qualities he wants to carry with him.
When asked what he is most proud of about himself, his answer wasn’t about a trophy, a goal, or an individual achievement. Instead, it came down to something much simpler.
“I show up every day and I give it my everything.”
For Heard, that mindset has become increasingly important during difficult periods.
The team has experienced its share of challenges this season, and Heard acknowledged how difficult it can be to invest so much into something without immediately seeing the results.
“As long as you can show up and control what you can, it’s a bit cliche to say, but that’s just the truth.”
The mentality is something he traces back to his parents, who he describes as hardworking people.
What the Badge Means
After everything Heard has experienced, from playing youth soccer on Vancouver Island to leaving home at 17, playing professionally across North America and Europe, and eventually returning to his hometown, the Pacific FC badge carries a different weight.
“It means an accumulation of all the work that’s been put in from all the people that have worn it, and all of the work, commitment and sacrifice that people will continue to put into it,” Heard said.
To Heard, that’s what makes a club special.
“It’s all the people that put the work in to make it into something great.”
Pacific FC is still a young club, but Heard believes there is already a history being built.
“We’re still young, so we’re still building tradition, but there’s already been so much work and tradition put into it.”
For him, though, wearing the badge means something more personal.
“It’s extra special because it’s home.”
The badge represents the place he grew up, the people who helped him get there and the journey that eventually brought him back. He grew up here, he’s a hometown boy, and now there is a pro team here.
And perhaps that’s the best way to understand Josh Heard’s relationship with the club. He didn’t grow up dreaming of playing for the Tridents because the club didn’t even exist yet. Instead, he grew up dreaming of playing football, and spent years travelling to make that dream a reality.
Now, six years into his Pacific FC journey, he gets to do something that very few professional footballers ever get the chance to do: play the game he loves, for the club in the place he calls home.
Behind the Badge
The people. The stories. The club
Behind the badge is a storytelling series that goes beyond the game that introduces the people who make Pacific FC what it is, from players and coaches to staff, supporters, community members and everyone in between.