Even in Vancouver’s warmest months, the water at the mouth of False Creek remains pretty brisk by most people’s standards: 13 degrees Celsius (55 degrees Fahrenheit) on average in midsummer, with occasional spikes like the one that’s nudged English Bay’s current levels up to about 19 degrees C (66 F).
Those are wetsuit conditions for all but the hardiest of swimmers or surfers. Sebastian Berhalter and his Whitecaps FC teammate Giuseppe Bovalina have gotten comfortable with the discomfort, though, enshrining an early-morning dip into their pregame rituals, accompanied by some meditation and mindfulness.
“It's something we do every gameday-1, home and away,” Berhalter explains in the latest episode of Breakaway, whose film crew accompanied the breakout midfielder around Rain City earlier this season for the series' latest episode.
“For me, the biggest thing, it's really a grounding moment, you know? It's doing stuff that you don't necessarily want to do. You don't want to wake up at 6:15, you don't want to go in cold water.
“It gets you prepared for the day, and it gets you prepared in that mindset of like, if I can do this, I can do a lot of things.”
Meteoric rise
If his breakout 2025 is anything to go by, it’s all working as intended for the 24-year-old.
After five years of grind and graft across three different MLS clubs, Berhalter’s slow, painstaking climb from teenage homegrown to overlooked reserve to regular starter finally exploded into something much more. Over the past few months, he’s become an All-Star and US international, anchoring the Whitecaps’ sensational surge to the Concacaf Champions Cup final and a place among the ranks of legitimate MLS Cup contenders.
He says this come-up has been a long time coming.
“I don't think anything changed. I think it was more of just, opportunity,” Berhalter said in a one-on-one interview with the Scuffed podcast at the US men’s national team’s hotel in New Jersey last week ahead of their friendly vs. South Korea. “Every year it's kind of been just a steady increase, not that everything just all of a sudden clicks. It’s just kind of been steady: each year get a little bit better, little bit better, and just keep working, finding ways to improve.
“Now it's just at the point where I'm at where I'm at. People might be surprised or shocked, but this is where I feel like I should be now, you know? And this is the progression that my career has led me to.”
USMNT breakthrough
There’s a remarkable sense of contrast between the speed of this year’s ascent and the hard grinding – most of it far away from the wider spotlight – that laid the foundation for it.
After not even getting called into January camp, the USMNT’s traditional offseason proving ground for MLS standouts, the central midfielder has started seven of the Yanks’ last nine matches. Most of them came during their run to the Gold Cup final, in which he notched two assists, both free-kick deliveries on towering headers from Chris Richards, the first a game-winner vs. Saudi Arabia and the second in the tense tournament final vs. Mexico. In doing so, Berhalter has pushed into contention for a place on next summer’s World Cup roster.
That set-piece expertise is a particular asset. Like so much about his rise, it got honed the hard way, over long hours on the training ground and extra work with specialist coaches for both club and country – and, as FOX reported during the Gold Cup, even emerging technology like TrackMan, a product used by Vancouver and the USMNT, which compiles granular data on the speed, trajectory and movement of those flighted balls.
“The biggest thing is just the routine, doing the same thing every single time,” Berhalter explained last week. “You take out a lot of variability when you do that. So for me, it's about taking the same steps back, placing the ball in the same way, putting my foot in the same way. It kind of just minimizes that margin for error.
“For me, that's been the biggest thing, just developing that routine and those habits before I take them, and getting into a clear headspace. And then, just hit my shot,” he continued. “It’s like golf: If it goes where I want it to go, great. If not, that's OK; I know I did the right steps to put it in that spot.”
"It's honestly surreal"
Breakaway confirms: Golf is another core element of Berhalter’s life, both recreation and meditation, in a sense. As he explained to MLSsoccer.com in a conversation earlier this season, a round on the links slots snugly into his ideal day out in Vancouver, and the cameras caught him, Brian White and Tate Johnson adding a notable new Whitecap to their scorecard this summer: German legend Thomas Müller, probably the biggest signing in club history and a massive reinforcement for their MLS stretch run.
Playing golf and chasing trophies with one of the greatest players of his generation provides one more pinch-me moment in a year full of them for Berhalter. That’s fueled in no small part by the reality that up until now he’d been toiling in the shadow of his father Gregg, who managed the Columbus Crew while Sebastian was rising through the club’s academy and left a powerful legacy as first a standout defender and later the head coach of the USMNT.
So while Sebastian’s first US cap didn’t arrive until June, he’d already spent his whole life as a passionate supporter of the team, which has added a different level to his experiences as a member of the squad.
“It's honestly surreal, just, like, being with these guys,” he said last week. “Sometimes I just take a second, like, ‘damn, I'm really here right now.’ I don't ever want to leave. Being around these guys [after] watching them for so long, it’s like, this is what I dreamed of doing.”
Growing up in the game
Gregg’s career has made for a complicated inheritance – Sebastian has spoken of being under a “microscope” as a coach’s son, feeling the need to prove himself that much more. He credits the Whitecaps for providing him the fresh start and “change of scenery” he needed after not quite breaking through in Columbus or at Austin FC, where he spent a season on loan under his father’s longtime assistant coach Josh Wolff, before landing in Vancouver in 2022.
But it also provided him with a priceless 24/7 immersion into soccer culture from the cradle, including a chunk of his childhood in the European footballing kaleidoscope while Gregg managed Swedish side Hammarby. It should also be noted that his mother Rosalind was also an elite player, winning four NCAA national championships at the University of North Carolina in the 1990s.
“About all the teams he’s been at as a player and a coach, I felt like I was an ultra, you know?” Sebastian said of his father. “I felt so much passion for the teams. Honestly, that passion probably rolled into the person I am, too, and then the player I am, because of being so diehard with whatever team he was with.”
His colleagues see the influence of that upbringing in his approach to his craft.
“You get some insights, and you get also to learn from people who really know the game and study it and work with it every day,” VWFC head coach Jesper Sørensen told MLSsoccer.com earlier this season. “I think that has benefited Sebastian, probably. But also, sometimes it's a little bit hard to be a coach's son.
“Sebastian has definitely a higher football IQ,” he added. “He is definitely a player that likes the game, that wants to learn new stuff all the time, and wants to work with his game all the time. So he's a great student, and maybe it's also in his genes.”
Finding a home
Sørensen has also been a key piece of the puzzle. Berhalter credits the Dane for coaxing more of an attacking mindset out of him, helping unlock his full skill set as a two-way midfielder after working in more of a utility role under Sørensen’s predecessor, Vanni Sartini.
Parents, coaches, teammates: They’ve all played their part. Yet it’s Sebastian himself who had to put it all together – and he nearly stopped short before finding that groove, such were his frustrations in Columbus and Austin.
“Going to Austin, I didn't have a lot of routines and processes. I was kind of just playing, and [it was] the first time my career where I really looked around and thought, you know, I might be the worst player on the field right now,” he reveals on Breakaway. “And that was a reality check a little bit. I almost wanted to quit soccer, because it was like, this is terrible. And I'm so thankful that Vancouver took a chance on me, because there was no reason to – I’d just had a terrible season in Austin.”
It was out there on the edge of the continent, in cold water under snowy peaks, that he found himself.
“In Vancouver,” he says, “I started to develop that consistency and those routines that made me feel who I am as a person.”
