How far would you travel to see your favorite team play? For 21-year old Orlando City soccer fan Jake Ternent it’s over 4,000 miles. As he made the trek all the way from the United Kingdom to Orlando to take in his first Orlando City Soccer Club match alongside his Dad. It was an experience that took over all of his senses.

He knows every chant, has memorized the starting lineup and can feel the rumble from the supporters section beneath his feet.

Jake Ternent is living out a dream as he soaks up the team’s game day experience with his father.

“It’s the fans, it’s the atmosphere,” Ternent described. “The atmosphere it puts some premiere league teams to shame –it puts some European clubs to shame.”

From entering the stadium, finding his seat and hearing the drumline in person – he can’t get enough of his favorite team.

“I stay up really late at night sometimes up until five a.m. in the morning but it’s not just me it’s hundreds of people on twitter I talk to, messaging people to see what their opinions are,” Ternent said of keeping up with the team in New Castle.

Jake is from the UK and on June 23^rd he attended his first match. And it’s been four years in the making--after he was introduced to the club during a family vacation to Orlando.

“If this club ever, if anything bad ever happened to this club I wouldn’t support any other team, put it that way,” Ternent explained.

The only difference between you watching a game and Jake watching a game—well he see’s things a little differently from the stands.

“He was born with congenital amaurosis—which means both the retinas in the back of the eyes are damaged,” Jake’s father Steven explained.

It’s a degenerative disease—his depth perception is off and he has no peripheral vision.

“I can barely see out of my right eye, can see better out of my left eye is stronger—it comes from me parents it has to do with genes and stuff,” Ternent said.

In about five years Jake will lose his vision completely --but that will not change his love for Orlando City Soccer Club.

As his four other senses will continue to kick into overdrive and with his dad’s help describing the game—he’ll stay faithful to the club. 

“Who’s passing to who, where the ball is—in the center coming away from the wind , going through the middle doing down the box,” Steve describes the game to Jake… “If it’s a corner or far side. For Newcastle I know all the players names… but because I am new to this he knows all these players I just tell him the number and he knows who they are.”

Jake jokes that his dad should get paid for all the extra play-by-play work but says soccer is and always will be a part of his life no matter the distance or the visual obstacle.