LAFC: Taking pre-match traditions to new heights | OneFootball

By J. Sam Jones

Denis Bouanga and Son Heung-Min are doing just fine, but will they ever be as dynamic a pairing for LAFC as Olly and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?

Olly is, of course, a female Red Naped Shaheen Falcon with a top-flight speed of 214 miles per hour and a weekend gig as LAFC’s mascot. Abdul-Jabbar is a 7-foot-2 male human with a popular Substack, 62 acting credits on IMDb and several notable accomplishments as a basketball player. When the two met before an LAFC match in 2019, Olly landed on Abdul-Jabbar’s arm before being lifted higher than she’s ever been lifted before or since to take a flight around BMO Stadium.

“When he was ready for Olly to take off, he timed it perfectly and launched her up, I swear, like 20 feet in the air,” LAFC falconer Jason Miknuk said. “And you can see the expression on her face like, ‘Oh, crap.’”

Falcon or GOAT?

Olly has partnered with hundreds of celebrities since beginning her pre-game flights (with an assist from LAFC co-owner Will Ferrell) in April of 2018.

She takes off, swoops around, and eventually divebombs a lure branded with the logo of that day’s opponent. Olly tries to keep it under 100 mph most of the time, but every now and then she’ll get out of first gear and really hit the gas. It’s a stage presence choice for her. Olly, named for Los Angeles’ Olvera Street, has always been LA-ready. There are two other falcons — Fig and Mel — who have gameday roles from time to time, but Olly gets most of the spotlight.

“If you have Kobe, you're going to start Kobe, right? If you have Jordan, are you not going to start Jordan?” Miknuk said. “That's Olly. She's such an amazing bird, and she's so consistent. There's no reason not to. A lot of sports fans are very superstitious as well, too. So we train the other birds and do US Open [Cup] and other scrimmages and stuff like that. We get the other falcons training.

"But MLS matches, it's always Olly.”

Even Jordan had an off night every now and then, though. In March of last year, during what would become a 5-0 win over Nashville SC, Olly decided to take a brief trip to a building across the street from the stadium. She made it back by the 74th minute, just in time to watch Cristian Olivera make it 4-0 a minute later.

Brief vacation aside, Olly rarely misses a beat. She doesn’t get flustered when kids want to come up and show her their official Olly stuffed animal. And she doesn’t get flustered when the pre-match celebrity gets a little nervous.

“We had this one athlete…” Miknuk said. “I don't want to name them, but I mean, a high-level athlete, mortified holding that one-pound bird, and they barely kept it together.”

Not every falcon can be Jordan. Not every falconer can be Kareem.

Raptor representation

Regardless of which celebrity or which falcon is on hand, there’s always been a Miknuk involved. Jason’s dad, Ken, is the original LAFC falconer. Ken became a licensed falconer in 1981 at the age of 16. Years down the line, nine-year-old Jason began working with raptors, too.

When LAFC began their inaugural season in 2018, they decided to incorporate falcons into their matchday experience. In addition to falcons being native inhabitants of LA, they fit a very particular aesthetic.

“We definitely didn’t want a mascot, which is somebody running around in a furry outfit,” former club president Tom Penn told MLSsoccer.com in 2019.

“With the wing in the crest and the fact that we represent flight, that we represent speed, we got into this obsession about what sort of bird would be on brand, what would be appropriate.”

The Falconers

At that point, they just needed to find a falconer. Enter Ken, Jason and their business, California Falconry. After that first flight with Ferrell, Ken worked as the lead LAFC falconer until October 2023. Jason took over from there and now he’s at every LAFC match, taking part in the fastest pre-game ritual in sports. A pre-game ritual that usually includes a post-game check-in with Ken.

“That’s how we bonded, and that's, you know, how we bond to this day,” Jason said. “Like if one of us has a good flight, we’ll call the other one just giggling with excitement. ‘Oh, Sunny did this.’ ‘Olly did this.’ ‘She tricked me here.’ ‘It was so much fun.’ ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ right? So it's still a huge part of how we bond with one another.”

Along with their work at matches, Jason, Olly and the rest of California Falconry visit schools and other organizations around LA to educate and let folks experience the birds up close and personal. There’s a lot of joy for Jason in seeing kids light up around the birds. But there’s a particular rush in watching Olly at work on match day.

“She'll be five feet over somebody doing 100 miles per hour, and she fills up the whole stadium, you know, absolutely amazingly, and just takes this dynamic flight,” Miknuk said. “So one of my favorite things is, when she does the wing over — basically she’ll do like a half barrel roll to accelerate to come down to hit the lure — and there's always an audible gasp on that first wing over that first dive.

"And I chuckle every single time. After eight years, I still chuckle.”