Dallas Cowboys all-pro kicker and Plano Senior High grad Brandon Aubrey didn’t have a traditional path to the NFL, but that only makes it all the more inspiring. From a standout high school and collegiate soccer career that led him to become a first-round pick in the MLS to working as a software engineer while still pursuing his dream of an athletic career, Aubrey’s story is one of hard work and resilience.
It makes it all the more appropriate that Aubrey and his wife, Jennifer, are set to serve as honorary hosts for “TASTE 2025 - Wings of Change,” a March 6 fundraiser for the Hendrick Scholarship Foundation. The foundation, named after former Plano ISD Superintendent Dr. H. Wayne Hendrick, is dedicated to providing scholarships and mentoring to local Plano ISD students who have overcome significant adversity in their lives.
This year’s fundraising event takes place at Mercedes-Benz of Plano and features a dinner served by more than a dozen major restaurants, along with cocktails and a pair of auctions. Past Hendrick Scholarship recipients will also share their stories during the event.
Aubrey explains he first heard about the foundation through his mother, who met one of its members at a sorority event. “After hearing about it, I thought it was such a great idea and a great cause,” Aubrey says.
“It was a no-brainer for me to get involved."
Aubrey calls his days at Plano Senior High “a formative time in my life.” “It’s where I found myself falling in love with computer science, which is what I ended up studying in college, and was able to pursue a really high level of competition in soccer,” Aubrey says.
Aubrey was all about soccer in those days. He recalls choosing soccer over his other athletic pursuits from middle school, including football. “My goal, like every kid that makes that choice, was to make it to the professional level. That was my goal, without any sort of side quests or anything like that.”
That goal carried him through a decorated career at Notre Dame, where he played soccer for four years while earning his degree, and eventually to the MLS as a first-round pick by Toronto FC. After a two-year stint in the MLS lower division league, however, he decided to make a change. “I had the opportunity to sign with another team in that league but wasn’t making enough money for me to support a family,” Aubrey says. The recently married Aubrey made the decision to quit soccer and start his “backup plan” for a career after athletics earlier than anticipated by working as a software engineer.
He says he was “not quite my normal self” for a few months after the decision. That is until his wife helped him discover his next athletic calling. “We were watching football like we always do, and we saw a kicker kick a field goal…and she said, ‘I think you could do that.’” Aubrey remembers. He still wasn’t convinced until they went out to a local football field to try a few kicks. From there on, he began training as a kicker and eventually found himself under the tutelage of kicking coach Brian Egan.
“I still viewed myself as an athlete. I still really wanted to do that, and football provided an opportunity where, if you make it to the professional level, you really are setting your family up for success in the long haul,” Aubrey says. “I kind of just told myself that the payoff, whether we’re likely to hit or not, is so big that it’s worth the effort and the time while we’re still young (and) we still have a leg that works.”
Even after a year and a half of training, the process of breaking into professional football didn’t come easy. After all, there are only 32 jobs for kickers in the NFL. Aubrey explains that at any point in time, there are probably 50 or 60 players capable of filling those jobs. That leaves a good number of talented kickers looking in from the outside, Aubrey included.
For about two years, he attended different kicking combines of sorts where he would showcase his skills in front of NFL scouts. The sentiment became that he had the skills needed to make the kicks, but teams didn’t know if he could handle the intense mental pressures that come with the job. “It felt kind of like smashing your head into a brick wall for a while,” Aubrey says of working his way into the pros. He felt like he had done as much as he could until someone gave him an actual opportunity to prove it.
Around that time, spring football received an influx of interest, including through the reboot of the 80s NFL alternative, the USFL. “They were looking for someone like me to give a chance to,” Aubrey says. After an impressive back-to-back championship run with the league’s Birmingham Stallions, Aubrey finally found his way into the NFL right in the backyard of the city where his athletic journey began.
He says it’s a different feeling playing soccer versus football. “Soccer, you’re turned on the whole game mentally and physically,” Aubrey says. “You’re mentally exhausted making decisions the whole time, but you’re in a state of flow where you’re not consciously thinking about them.” Playing in the NFL leads to a different kind of mental exhaustion, thanks to the pressures that come with the kicker’s unique role. “You see your plays coming from a mile away, but they are few and far between,” Aubrey says. “You try your hardest all day to be mentally locked in for those moments, but that requires kind of tuning it out for the moments where you’re not on the field or know you’re not going to be on the field, so you have that mental willpower ready to go when you need it.”
Aubrey says he realized during the time between his two athletic careers that “nerves, fear and not coping with those emotions well enough” played a major factor in his time in professional soccer ending prematurely. Aubrey points to how he’s embraced learning to recognize those emotions and reframing them as signs he cares.
"I swore to myself if I ever got an opportunity to kick in an NFL game, I wouldn’t let those things stop me."
Reflecting on his journey to the NFL and the recent recognition he’s received from the Plano community, Aubrey says his experiences have inspired him and helped him prove to himself that he can overcome failure. As he now looks ahead following the birth of his first child around six months ago, he feels happy to be at a point where he can give back to the community and remains focused on being the best husband, father and kicker he can be.
“Those struggles, I think they’ve made me into a much better kicker and a much better husband and father as well,” Aubrey says.
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