Before the narrative about his father takes hold, Matt Freese asks for one correction: his mother, Marcia Geary Wolicki, was the primary supporter of his soccer dreams. Freese, the starting goalkeeper for the U.S. men’s national team, told reporters he owes much to her and did not want that to be overshadowed by the more optically compelling story about his father.
Wolicki mostly raised Freese and his three older siblings after their parents divorced when he was 8, according to Freese. She drove him to high school at 5 a.m. so he could get extra reps and workouts, and she was the steadier presence as the family juggled academics and the chaos of four boys under one roof.
His father, Dr. Andrew Freese, was a noted neurosurgeon and pioneer of gene therapy, according to his obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Dr. Freese served as chief of neurosurgery and neurological medical director at Brandywine Hospital, pursued early gene-therapy surgery to treat neurological disorders, treated gunshot wounds, helped some patients recover mobility and extended lives beyond expected prognoses. He had been publishing medical research since his time at MIT, where he completed a Ph.D. under an advisor who later founded Moderna.
The family has deep scientific ties: Freese’s grandparents worked at the National Institutes of Health and his sister, Dr. Katherine Freese, is a physics professor studying theoretical cosmology and astroparticle physics. Another sister, Dr. Lyssa Freese, is an assistant professor of earth system science. Matt, the youngest of four children born within six years, was described as an effervescent, funny kid — in second grade he once dressed as a rival-school cheerleader for Halloween.
Freese left Harvard after three semesters in 2018 to sign with the Philadelphia Union, a decision that drew misgivings from his father, according to the family account. Dr. Freese died of kidney failure at 61 in July 2021 and did not live to see Matt’s later career developments: the goalkeeper moved to New York City FC in 2023, earned the starting job there, and would go on to become the U.S. team’s No. 1 goalkeeper during a World Cup year.
