Drew Conner was in his apartment Tuesday at the University of Wisconsin in Madison when he got the phone call he had been hoping for since he was a kid.

The 2012 Cary-Grove graduate shushed his friends who were gathered around the flickering TV in his living room. On the other end of the line, he heard Chicago Fire coach Veljko Paunovic, general manager Nelson Rodriguez and technical director Brian Bliss.

The Major League Soccer club offered the senior midfielder a Homegrown Player contract, a rule that allows MLS teams to bypass the draft to sign local players who participated in their academy system.

When he hung up with the Fire, Conner’s first call was to his father, Tom.

“My dad and I have shared the bond of soccer,” Conner said. “This has kind of been our project. It’s been our dream.”

The dream started as a 3-year-old kicking a soccer ball around in the back yard and developed into a dynamic midfielder competing with players years his elder on elite travel teams. When the MLS started its Homegrown Player system in 2008, Fire Director of Youth Programs Paul Cadwell recruited Conner.

Cadwell invited Conner to the team’s facility, walked them onto the pitch at Toyota Park and told the teenager the goal was to one day get him out onto this field.

“I knew in my heart when he was 14, he could do it,” Tom Conner said.

Three to four nights a week, Tom and Drew drove 50 miles from Cary down I-290 to the Chicago Fire Academy’s training facility in Bridgeview. As the miles flew by, Tom took conference calls in the car and Drew scrambled to keep up on his homework.

They added up the miles one time. The journey took them more than 50,000 miles, which they joke is the equivalent of about twice around the Earth.

Over the years, Conner scored the final penalty kick to win a national championship for the Fire Academy. He blossomed into the 2011-12 Illinois Gatorade Player of the Year and the 2012 Northwest Herald Boys Soccer Player of the Year. He was selected to the Big Ten’s All-Freshman team in 2012 and the All-Big Ten’s second team as a sophomore.

“You have to be incredibly focused. It’s not very easy,” Conner’s high school coach at Cary-Grove, Mark Olson said. “Everybody can say they want to become a professional, but to actually make a reality takes a lot of sacrifice.”

Tom got tipped off about the call from the Fire and planned to arrive in Madison shortly afterward. When Tom got to Drew’s apartment, Drew dashed down the stairs of his apartment and embraced his father. They celebrated with dinner at a Brazilian steak house.

The proud father joked with the wait staff, asking if they had ever served a professional soccer player before. (They hadn't.) They all laughed.

Tom had traveled 115 miles to Madison to be with his son. But after all the miles they spent on the road to get to the pros, what were a few more to celebrate it?