After all, the former Skyline High School standout played only club soccer in junior college - he had only one scholarship offer, from a small school in Colorado that he didn't like - had never received serious attention from pro scouts and had been mostly "just kind of having fun" kicking the ball around on a men's amateur league team in Salt Lake City.

But then, an unfamiliar little man approached him after one of the games at the Donnelly Cup tournament, armed with a fusillade of questions.

"I was looking at him kind of all funny," Braun recalled, "because I didn't know who he was."

Turns out, it was Preki, the legendary Serbian player and coach for Chivas USA of Major League Soccer who was attending the tournament to scout another player. Yet by the time Preki finished talking that day in January, Braun had been invited to Chivas USA's preseason training camp - a golden opportunity that Braun has almost magically transformed into a full-time job with the defending MLS Western Conference regular-season champions.

"I'm still kind of in awe about the whole thing," Braun said. "It's still a little unreal. I'm definitely starting to realize I could make a career out of it."

Why not? Having quit school at the University of Utah and moved to California to pursue his dream - "one of easiest decisions I've ever made," he said - the 21-year-old striker hardly seems to be just another name filling out the bottom of the roster. He made his pro debut in his first opportunity, playing the final 17 minutes of Chivas' season-opening draw at FC Dallas on the day before his birthday last weekend, and could be on the field again when Real Salt Lake visits the Home Depot Center on Saturday night.

"I thought he did pretty decent for somebody who is very inexperienced and has never really been in any hard, competitive games," Preki said. "I thought the kid did a pretty decent job."

Already, he has worked wonders, in the eyes of his family and friends, who know all about how Justin and his older brother Nathan (who tried out for the inaugural RSL team) played together for years on teams all around the Salt Lake Valley - from Skyline United and Impact to Sparta, Olympique Montreux and the Salt Lake Community College club team.

Every day, they played, dreaming for an opportunity like this one.

"We always hoped Justin and his brother would live this dream," said his mother, Judy Braun, an associate professor at SLCC. "But the reality was, how many people want this and never get even close? It was a needle-in-a-haystack opportunity. It was very surreal to see him on the TV playing MLS soccer. I felt like I was in a different world."

She wasn't the only one.

Braun was surprised when Preki called on him to replace Ante Razov, one of the all-time leading scorers in league history. "I wasn't expecting it," he said. "The whole atmosphere of it was just unreal. I definitely never saw myself playing in a stadium like that, in front of that kind of crowd."

His father swears he did, though.

The director of a company that conducts clinical trials for drugs and medical devices, Michael Braun has coached his sons and daughter Samantha, and said he knew from the time they were young that at least one of them would get a shot at the pros someday. That almost happened a couple of years ago, he said, when an agent attempted to land Justin Braun a spot on the developmental team for FC Porto in Portugal - only to see the team fold because of financial constraints before a deal was made.

"We knew his chance would come soon," Michael Braun said.

Nobody knows how long it might last, though.

As much as the 6-foot-3 Braun seems to have impressed with his size, speed and "idea how to play the game," as Preki put it, he signed only a one-year developmental contract, and could be released at any time. That has made adjusting to pro soccer even more stressful, but Braun said his new teammates have been friendly and helpful as he adjusts to what he hopes will be an unexpected new career based on that old dream that he was starting to fear would never come true.

"I'm just kind of going day-by-day right now," he said. "You never know. My plan right now is to keep playing as long as my body can handle it."

mcl@sltrib.com

RSL at Chivas USA

Saturday, 8:30 p.m.