Jon Marante is all about goals—setting, making, and tending them, to be precise.

The Miami-born special events bartender at Rosie’s Bar and Grill in Wilton Manors recalls one of the first ones he set:

“I couldn’t wait to ‘come out’,” he says with a laugh.

“I attended a small, very conservative, non-denominational Christian school in southwest Miami-Dade County. Once I graduated, I was out—and ‘out’.”

The other goals that figure largely in his young life involve balls—the ones used to play the sport of soccer (or association “football,” as it’s known to the world’s other 6.7 billion people), a game he has played—predominantly as a goaltender and on the field’s “left wing”—in matches held across the country, including New York, Texas, Las Vegas, and North Carolina.

“I’ve played soccer my entire life,” Marante says. “I played in high school, and my plan—my ‘goal’, if you will, originally was to play on a college scholarship.

“I love soccer. It’s 90 minutes of me losing myself, enjoying myself,” he enthuses. “Whatever stresses I have, whatever problems, they go away when I play.”

That enthusiasm translated to a spot on one of the nation’s most successful gay soccer teams, Fort Lauderdale-based United Football Club (UFC), a team which went all the way to last year’s Gay Games, which were held from August 9 to August 16, 2014 in Cleveland, Ohio.

“It was very emotional, getting to play in the Gay Games,” Marante reflects. “On the first day, we won all our matches, we realized that we had something going on—and it sank in that we had a chance to take the top prize.”

Marante and UFC performed so well, in fact, that they played their way into the finals. A stunning achievement, although it ended in disappointment for the South Florida team, which finished second to the San Francisco Spikes.

“It was a heart-breaker,” Marante admits, “but in the end we had the best time, and I made lifelong friends who I stay in touch with.” (The miracle of Facebook.)

Despite his athletic prowess, Marante owns a humble attitude and a self-effacing charm that makes you want to envelope him in a hug (okay—that’s not the only reason you want to hug him).

“When I moved to Fort Lauderdale, I discovered that I had an accent,” he says, half-jokingly. “It made me self-conscious at first, but I got used to it.”

(For the record, I can’t detect an accent.)

The five words he uses to describe himself are “trustworthy,” “open-minded,” “fun,” and “work-horse—if that counts as a word.”

Behind the bar, he says the “drink to impress” he recommends is the classic Manhattan (a cocktail made with whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters), which he prefers to serve “stirred, not shaken.”

I ask him if there’s one thing he would change about himself.

“I trust people too easily,” he admits. “I wish I wasn’t as gullible, and instead of giving people the benefit of the doubt from the get-go, I wish I was one of those people who required that trust be earned instead of just given.”

But as Marante acknowledges, it’s all in the game.

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