From soccer to singing, Perry's 6-6 twins left Switzerland for full high school experience

It's early in Gilbert Perry's soccer match on a Monday evening and Phoenix Berney excuses himself to get to a singing commitment.

Berney and his brother, Roman, are due to sing in a choir recital at Perry High School. They do their performance, and, in the second half, Phoenix is back playing center-midfield for the Pumas to finish up their 4-2 win over Queen Creek.

"We're always trying to coordinate with young kids, whether they're multi-sport athletes or other things," Perry soccer coach Jason Berg said. "We want them to be kids first. We want to make sure that they're doing what they want to do."

Roman would have been on the field with Phoenix, but he's still nursing a leg injury that has prevented him from playing so far during Perry's 7-2 start to the season. He is expected to return to the field for the defending 6A state champs after the holidays.

The 6-foot-6, 210-pound sophomore twins took in the beauty of Switzerland and the Alps, learning to ski when they were 3. But their mom, Stormy, a 1992 Mesa Red Mountain High School graduate, felt they were missing out on the full high school life she had.

That was the main reason for her to move with the boys in mid-August. Stormy's husband, the twins' father, will commute four times a year as an IT specialist from Switzerland. Because of the time zones with his work, he needs to stay in Europe.

"The Swiss schools are all just academic focus," Stormy said. "They don't have music, theater, arts, sports that a regular school (in America) has incorporated.

"The boys have always been singers. They were involved in the music school in Switzerland, but it's not part of the regular school. Here, they get to sing every day and play soccer every day, because sports and music are part of school. That is what I experienced and I just really wanted them to be able to have those opportunities."

After graduating from Arizona State, Stormy set off to Europe, where she would meet her husband. They lived in Paris, before settling down in Switzerland, where the twins were born. The twins learned German and French, along with speaking fluent English, growing up. Their father is half-German and half-Swiss, but he grew up in Switzerland.

"We had prep English in school, it's a requirement," Phoenix said. "My father grew up in the French speaking part, and then we moved to the German-speaking part before we started kindergarten. Now we speak three languages."

In club they play the same position. But at Perry, they're at different positions.

Phoenix would move up to midfield. At Perry, there are several players at center-back. Phoenix moved up to defensive midfielder, where he's played nearly every minute, except for the Queen Creek game when he left for part of the game to sing in the choir.

"I like to shoot from far," Phoenix said. "In a tournament we played (before the Perry season), me and my brother scored five of the first seven goals because of long shots and headers. I don't think that would have been possible if we were both center-backs. Maybe we could have denied more goals, but we wouldn't have been able to score as much."

Perry's soccer team runs through Gatorade Arizona Soccer Player of the Year Caden Dosmann, who plays on the same Phoenix Rising club team as the twins. The Berneys feel privileged to be on the same team as Dosmann, learning the more physical style of soccer than what they were used to playing in Switzerland.

Dosmann is on the Rising's Under 19 team, while the Berney brothers play for the Under 17 team. But they would come up and play with Dosmann.

"He's accepted us," Roman said. "Caden was always just very nice and talked with us. He's an amazing player. And he's super fast. He's amazing on and off the field."

Phoenix Berney said the plan was to try out high school. They like this so much they want to stay at Perry now and then to go college through academics or soccer. But it was a shock to the system coming from Switzerland to the brutal 110-degree heat in the Valley last August when they moved.

They'd been in Arizona before on vacations visiting their mother's family. But not in the summer.

"We tried to avoid the heat," Phoenix said. "There were some hard struggles with the heat. We didn't have air-conditioning our first day. We sweat so much during the night, we got cramps the next day during the workout. Three days after moving here, we had our first (club) game, and it was like, after 10 minutes, you're exhausted. You can't even run any more. It took us a while, but we got used to it."

Roman said their parents brought them to experience all of life, academically, sports and the arts. They miss the Alp and skiing. They've had to get used to the more physical style of play in soccer. There was no high school soccer in Switzerland.

"The players start at a very young age (in Switzerland)," Roman said. "And if you don't start early, you don't make it. We've had friends who wanted to start playing, and the wait list was over two years long."

Berg said the twins stand out on the Perry soccer field with their size, being the biggest kids on the field.

"I get that with every coach, 'Hey, what are you doing?'" Berg said is the usual response from opposing coaches when they see a 6-6 player running around the field. "This my 15th year coaching high school, and this is the tallest team I've ever had. I think we have seven guys who are over 6 foot, which is crazy. We're a pretty big team."

The Berney brothers plan is go to college. But the twins didn't know how in Switzerland.

"My mom was a very good student so she always made it important to us to make good grades," Roman said. "She wants us to go to college, because it can take one injury that could ruin your career. If you don't have a Plan B, you're in trouble. That's always been important to our parents."

To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert atrichard.obert@arizonarepublic.com or 602-316-8827. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter:@azc_obert

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Perry 6-6 soccer twins left Switzerland to experience full HS life