Friday, April 18, 2003

 

Hello to all from the USLsoccer.com Locker Room! 

If I were to tell you that I primarily work for six months a year and then have six months off, most of you would love to have my job.  Of course it sounds great to be able to vacation for six months a year, but unfortunately things aren't that sweet. 

In the wonderful world of A-League soccer, unlike any other soccer leagues in the world, our season only lasts for half a year.  Usually the six-month time frame between seasons seems to fly by, but this year things went particularly slow. 

We, the Richmond Kickers, made it to the A-League Championship game last season, only to lose to the Milwaukee Rampage in double overtime. That left an extremely bitter taste in our mouths.  What made it even more painful was knowing that we would have to live with that as our last soccer memory for the next six months.

Now what does a professional soccer player do for an extended period of time when there is no soccer to be played?

I personally fill my time by coaching and training.  I am the goalkeeper coach for the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Men's and Women's soccer teams.  I also coach an Under-14 girls youth team in the Richmond Kickers Youth Soccer Club.  On top of that, I train a number of young goalkeepers in the Richmond area and coach in numerous clinics. 

For the first three months, my training took place primarily at Gold's Gym Richmond.  Once January rolled around, my big project was trying to turn my assistant coach, Jesse Myers, into a goalkeeper trainer.   This began in the winter of 2002, and I must say, Jesse impressed me this year.  We would either go out to a local field by ourselves or with a few guys from the team and have some fun. 

So, that's how I keep myself entertained, but what does the rest of my team do? 

One of my teammates works at a local golf course, and another works for a veterinary clinic.  One of my roommates was the assistant coach for the Liberty University Women's team in Lynchburg, VA.  Another roommate went back to school to take some more classes to work towards his degree, and my last roommate decided to get engaged.  A defender on the team works full time in the off-season for an insurance company, and one of our forwards decided to go home to Trinidad.  Can you really blame him…winter in Richmond or a Caribbean Island?  Another one of our "versatile" players decided to stay in shape by participating in a NAVY Seals training program (I bet our die-hard Kickers fans can guess who that was).  Another player is co-head coach with his wife for the VCU women's team. 

There are a lot of things going on in the off-season, but what about playing?

Starting in January, the players who are in town get together twice a week to play indoor futsal (a game which originated in Brazil and is played with a smaller ball that doesn't really bounce).  This usually lasts through February.

Then in March, our informal "optional" training and fitness begins.  During the week, we meet in the mornings in various spots throughout Richmond and train (our primary focus is on fitness and getting a lot of touches on the soccer ball).  During the weekends we have scrimmages with college teams from the area.  This spring, we even had a road trip to play two college teams in North Carolina. 

Then, finally, it's April.  Our pre-season officially kicked off on April 1st, and we were all more than ready to start. 

So, that's how we spent our off-season.  It was filled with lots of memories, lots of waiting, and many visions of redemption.  But the waiting is finally over, the new uniforms are in and we're counting down the days until our first game.  Here in Richmond we're lucky…we get to play the Charleston Battery for our opener, and I'm sure that they'll have a bit of payback on their minds as well.