Going all-in landed Sawyer Jura his dream spot with Portland Timbers
The Bend native made his MLS debut last week.
Sawyer Jura’s voice trembled.
With equal parts pluck and polish, the 18-year-old sat in front of a step-and-repeat in Frisco, Texas and articulated to the media on July 4 just what it meant to make his MLS debut.
Typically, no matter how big the stage, he’s proud of his ability to let any nerves wash away once the game begins. But during his inaugural postgame appearance with the first team, his nerves, understandably, eked out.
“I’ve worked for this my whole life,” the offensive-minded fullback said after logging two minutes at the end of the Portland Timbers’ 3-2 loss to F.C. Dallas. “This badge, I take such pride when I put it on.”
Jura became the second-youngest player to ever see the field for the first team when he subbed in the 88th and logged his first two Major League Soccer minutes. The appearance is likely the last of the season for Jura, who signed a four-year MLS NEXT Pro Homegrown contract that has him playing two years with Timbers 2 (2024-25) and two more with the Timbers (2026-27). Per MLS rules, the club exhausted the last of his permitted call-ups. Unless the first team signs him, he’ll play the rest of the 2024 season with T2.
His debut gave him the first taste of what he hopes is a fruitful career for the club he grew up rooting for. It’s also a landmark moment in a journey that began when his family uprooted from Bend to help Sawyer pursue his soccer dream.
None of that sacrifice is lost on Jura.
In signing Jura, the Timbers committed to a player who joined its academy at age 11. One with vivid memories of his first Timbers game when he was 5 or 6 years old, shortly after the club turned MLS.
What do the names Diego Chara, Jack Jewsbury and Nat Borchers mean to him?
“Idols,” he said.
And now, coworkers.
Jura’s teen years have included a move from Bend to the Portland area to enter the club’s academy system — a gamble he and his parents, Ahna and Chris Jura, took with the hope that he’d one day earn a coveted homegrown contract.
Now that day is here. And Sawyer’s celebrating accordingly.
When Ahna Jura helped Sawyer move into his first solo apartment last month, she felt what she imagined many parents experience when dropping their child off at college.
Only instead of moving to college like many of his peers, Sawyer was enrolling at Timbers U.
Had he never moved, Sawyer figures he would have attended Caldera High School in Bend. Many of his friends attended Summit. Instead, he attended an online charter school as he worked his way through the Timbers Academy.
Classwork was mostly completed in solitude or with fellow Timbers 2 and Academy players at the Timbers Training Center in Beaverton. At times, he said, online school proved difficult.
“I’m kind of more of a tactile learner. I feel like I need to be more engaged doing stuff instead of reading content,” Jura said. “School-wise and friends-wise of course it was hard at first, but soon it became the norm. I was with my teammates.”
Moving day happened to coincide with the day Sawyer officially got his high school diploma from Baker Charter School. Rather than a cap-and-gown ceremony, the family moved out of the apartment they shared in Hillsboro, to Beaverton — closer to the Timbers’ training facility and, for the first time, on his own.
It all hit Ahna suddenly.
It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine, she’d repeat to herself. It’s like he’s just going to college.
Ahna and Chris Jura met at Chico State where they both played soccer before they got married and had Adin Jura, Sawyer’s older brother, then Sawyer. Ahna swore she was setting aside any maternal favoritism when describing how ‘special’ a player he was from the first time he touched the ball.
Even as early as kick-and-chase.
“There’d be those amoeba mob of kids running around,” she said of watching him at 5, 6 years old, “and Sawyer would just continue to score. He just had a gift. You could see it super early.”
Physically, he was always on the smaller side. He played a couple years up once he started playing club soccer and futsal with the Bend FC Timbers. As a 7-year-old, he’d play with kids as old as 12 or 13, “and hold his own,” Ahna said.
Was he gifted from an early age? Anyone who saw him play, like Bend FC Timbers president Chris Rodgers, could see that. But even with the encouragement of coaches, how does a family decide to uproot for their pre-teen’s budding soccer career?
Ahna cited her faith in Sawyer’s desire to pursue a pro soccer career, as well as his unrelenting work ethic. She also acknowledged the fear of passing up an opportunity only to one day ask, “What if?”
“He was driving the bus, but I’ve truly believed in him since he was little,” Ahna said. “I know it sounds crazy to say out loud.”
The Juras weren’t alone. Other families with budding soccer prospects from around the state — Salem, Eugene, Bend — have made similar moves.
“So many families, even from Salem, Eugene, Bend, are doing the same thing,” Ahna Jura said, “coming over and chasing it.”
When Sawyer was 13, Ahna took a leave of absence from her teaching job and they went to Spain to play for a youth soccer academy in Barcelona run by coaching guru Todd Beane. Sawyer held his own playing with a local Spanish team, and learned to fit in with players and coaches who primarily spoke Spanish and Catalan. He spoke neither.1
The family trip to Spain also showed his parents they may be able to stomach the soccer-fueled adventure that awaited.
Ahna has an appreciation and new perspective of that sacrifice five years later.
“I think we’re skidding into home plate, on fumes as a family re: that sacrifice and we’re just starting,” Ahna said. “It’s literally just beginning, and you never know what tomorrow holds. You’ve got to enjoy it, and it’s just such a long, long journey.”
None of that is lost on Sawyer.
“My parents have helped me so much,” he said. “We kind of knew this was the plan since I was really little. I always wanted to play professional. I didn’t want to go the college path.”
When the email came from his agent with news that the Timbers were offering him the coveted four-year deal, he felt a sense of relief. Flanked by his family and club’s media team, he officially put pen to paper in January.
“You never know what’s going to happen until it happens,” Jura said. “For me when I got it all inked, signed and got it back, I could take a deep breath for the first time in my career and say ‘OK, this is what I’m going to do for the next four years’ for the first time.”
In an increased role with Timbers 2, Sawyer has started all 10 games he’s played in. He has two goals, an assist and eight shots on goal. Both goals came against the team’s first two matchups with Vancouver Whitecaps 2 — the same team he scored his first professional goal against with T2 in 2022.
The first came in the fourth minute on the road on March 30. Jura gathered a pass from forward Noah Santos, took a touch to his right foot and uncorked a strike that sent the ball sailing past the keeper into the upper-right corner.
A little over a month later, he gathered a bouncing deflection from a corner kick and volleyed a left-footed line drive inside the keeper’s near post in the 46th minute.
Timbers 2 head coach Serge Dinkota has seen Jura score from that same spot regularly since he started coaching with the Timbers Academy when Sawyer was with the under-15 team. Four times in one season, even.
“I’ve scored a ton of those,” Jura said. “My mom always makes a joke with me before I leave the house on game day, she’ll just yell ‘Shoot it!’ Every once in a while I can step up and take one.”
Jura’s maturity, Dinkota said, can be measured by how well he adapts to each new level of play. Where some players might lose confidence after a stretch of poor play, Jura doesn’t dwell.2
“Whenever the expectations toward him have increased or he’s played at a higher level, there’s always that initial period where there’s a struggle,” Dinkota said, “but then comes the adaptation stage where he performs and really gets comfortable at that level.”
In many ways, he sees the same Sawyer from when he was 13 years old. Watching Jura develop from an academy player to homegrown signee is a point of pride for the club.
“That contract he’s on is very gratifying for all the work that everyone in the academy has put, and we can’t all wait until the day he’s with the first team and scores a goal or makes a clean tackle and posts a clean sheet — then our joy will be full,” Dinkota said. “There’s nothing more rewarding than to see that — a player who has been with a club since he was 13 years old to get all the way to the first team. That’s incredible.”
During stints training and suiting up with the first team this season, Jura has watched and listened especially intently to some of the coaches with uniquely storied resumes as defenders. Assistant coach Liam Ridgewell, who captained the Timbers’ 2015 MLS Cup, is a former England national team defender and preceded his stint with the Timbers with a long career in the Premier League. And, of course, head coach Phil Neville, who played in the Premiere league for nearly 20 years and was a full-back for England’s national team in the 90s and early 2000s.
Jura also credits the one-on-one defensive work and pointers Timbers defender Eric Miller has given him.
“These guys have done it at the highest levels, so just being able to listen to them as much as possible,” Jura said. “I’ve just been picking up as much as I can in these experiences. And reps, of course.”
Playing for F.C. Dallas during Jura’s debut was Marco Farfan, Gresham, Oregon native and former Timbers homegrown signee. Farfan is seven years older than Jura, who idolized the full-back.
Farfan and Jura met last year during the offseason. They got lunch and trained a few times together, with Sawyer noticing similarities and differences in Farfan’s experience as one of the club’s homegrown signees.
“Sometimes you’ve got to get thrown in the pool and see if you can swim,” Jura said. “The pressure, for me, is something that helps me perform. I think it’s been good. Every day is different … you can’t expect anything.”
— Andy Buhler, for The I-5 Corridor
Andy Buhler is a Portland-based sportswriter. He's an editor at SBLive covering high school sports across the country and a crumbling futsal player.
Now, he can follow along when Timbers coaches speak Spanish in meetings.
“Not too high with the highs, too low with the lows,” Dinkota said.
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Nice story. Let's hope that Sawyer can stay with the Timbers and not leave like Marco. Nice to have some homegrown players on the first team.
Great Feature!