A few weeks ago, I was walking toward the Case Center with a guy named Aaron who said he was going to soccer walk-on tryouts. He told me, ‘I want to tryout and eventually start for that team.’ I did not want to discourage the boy, so I responded in the nicest way I could.
‘No way. Not a chance. That idea is dumber than a box of anvils,’ I said. ‘You donning the BU jersey is about as likely as an SMG student actually caring about other people and not money.’
The BU men’s soccer team is an elite group of individuals who play soccer at a very high level. I don’t care how good of a player you might think you are: you won’t play on this team. You want to know why? You were not recruited and you’re from this country.
The team consists of eight international students, hailing from six different nations. These countries breed soccer players, while in America, soccer is the ugly stepsister of the four major sports. One of these foreign players, Michael Feely, from Lemmington Spa, England, said it is much different growing up there, in an environment that is based on soccer.
‘Over there, you’re always watching soccer,’ he said. ‘Watching it so much, you’re bound to pick up a few things and eventually, that can turn into better play.’
And if they’re not watching soccer, they’re playing it. If school’s not in session, you can easily find a soccer game.
‘We play a lot more games over there. Here, you have high school players playing around 30-plus games a year,’ Feely said. ‘Back home, we play close to 100 games a year. Students come to the pro level, there, ready to play.’
Feely also said, however, that American soccer has made tremendous strides over the past few years and the college players here are getting better each year.
Yet, the BU team has begun to recruit more internationally in recent years. The program seems to have a pipeline into the St. Olav Videregaende School in Norway, which has given BU two outstanding scorers in freshman Anders Ostli and junior co-captain Erik Evjen. The recruiting has traveled far and wide, reaching Australia and bringing sophomore Jaime Johnson in from Brisbane.
This recruiting style has done wonders for BU. I know there are those here who curse international recruiting and want teams to support American soccer, but why? Why should American soccer get any preference?
This past weekend, the team traveled to the University of Vermont for its first conference match of the season. The game saw BU score four second-half goals (including two within the final five minutes) to notch a 4-4 tie with the Catamounts. However, with the exception of an assist from Federico Bianchi (California), all the Terrier scoring fell into the hands of a few of its international stars: Evjen, Alan McNamara (Ireland) and Andy Dorman (Wales).
This team is led by its international players. And they are too good for the majority of us to compete with. They have skill and the mindset necessary to play at that level. We can only dream to be that good.
So to all those kids who think like Aaron, you might want to take care of a few things before attempting to play for a solid Division I program like BU’s:
Get faster: Watching practice the other day, I got a sense of how fast these guys actually are. They’ll burn you up and down the field and the interesting thing is, they won’t stop running. Their legs are like the pistons of a Rolls Royce engine, while ours measure up to a Dodge Neon. You could have the same skills as these guys, but they do it all at a faster pace.
Get in shape: Put down the cigarette and start working out. That keg of gut has got to go. ‘In the off-season,’ Feely explained. ‘We practice probably 3-4 times a week. And during the season it’s almost every non-game day.’
Understand the compromises: School might have to take backseat (although, this might not be hard for the majority of us). The team gets into the locker room by 2 p.m. each practice day, Feely said, and doesn’t usually leave until about 6 p.m. After that, there is the recovery period.
Fine, you probably think I’m nuts, but you try sprinting and thinking about soccer for nearly four hours, then coming home to read Shakespearean Drama. Yea, I didn’t think so.
Still want to play with these guys?
These foreign players interspersed with the crop of young American talent makes the BU team what it is: a dominant force in the America East Conference. If you want to be part of it, you have to be a great soccer player with the will to improve your existing skill. That comes from playing overseas.
Take it from someone who tried out. You might think you’re good enough to play at their level; you might think that these games are just a simple step up from high school. Similar to me, you’d be wrong.
Aaron was walking to Nickerson field for a tryout. Let’s hope he saved himself the trouble and turned around.
Nikhil Bramhavar, a senior in Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Services, is a weekly sports columnist for The Daily Free Press.
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