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Furm's Take: Getting To The Bottom Of Absurdity
An emotional Brett Faro following Saturday's championship win: Like most others sharing the uniform, he gets it.
San Antonio, TX — You people and your Kool-Aid. Making me sick. Yeah, the Messiah men’s soccer team won another national championship this weekend in Texas. And yes, it was complemented by an additional national title from the women’s team. And yeah, it gave the Falcons their third dual national championship in the last five years — and second straight. I was there for each of the last two. Saw them happen with my own eyes. But I’m trying to tell you: IT’S NOT NORMAL. You wanna know how unnatural this is? It’s never happened anywhere else, in the history of the NCAA. Nowhere! Messiah soccer is the NCAA’s version of Haley’s Comet, only someone forgot to tell them the whole once-every-76-years detail. But still, people around here act as if national championship trophies are industrial-sized paper weights. There’s not even enough trophy case space! You know where ’08 and ’09 women’s soccer national championship trophies are? In head coach Scott Frey’s office, perched atop a filing cabinet. “I kind of like them,” he told me Monday. “Maybe we shouldn’t buy another trophy case.” I let out a Texas-sized sigh. Everyone drinks the Kool-Aid around here. A couple days before we made our way down to San Antonio for the men’s and women’s championships, I asked Matt McDermott, my trusty and soccer-acute student assistant, what the percentages were that at least one of our teams would bring home a golden trophy. He thought about it for awhile, then uttered the unthinkable: “One hundred percent.” I threw him out of my office. Seven of the last 10 NCAA Division III National Championships for the men. Three of the last five for the women. Both teams have appeared in the last six ‘Final Fours.’ In seven out of the last eight years the ladies have been there; the guys in nine out of the last 10. During Sunday’s flight home, I could hear Jackie Chiles in my head: It’s rude, preposterous, outrageous!!! I’d had enough. I was not going to sit idly by and let this absurdity continue. I needed answers, and I needed them now. I turned to the seniors of both teams, figuring they could give me a reply to the most burning question in Grantham: How in the name of Dave Brandt does this keep happening? It first must be made known that, as a former coach, I have a soft spot in my heart for seniors in general. There’s something about going through that four-year process that just can’t be bottled up or reproduced. When you consider this year’s seniors, my soft spot turns into a three-chamber pit of mush. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve gotten to know all 13 of them well. If I were older and actually had a kid, I’d say I’d want any of them as a daughter- or son-in-law. As it stands now, I’d say that any of them could sublease my wife’s and my townhouse at a very reasonable rent. Amy Horst is one of my faves. She’s worked for me as a basketball statistician — along with Carey Cortese, Katlyn Musser and Amanda Naeher — and we’ve had our share of laughs and general merriment. This explained some non-manly tears rolling down my face during Saturday’s trophy presentation. “I think the biggest reason for our success is because we all have one goal and one goal only,” Horst said. “We want to win our next game, and win our last game of the year. Other places, people have team goals, but they also have individual goals. That doesn’t exist here. As you go through the program, you begin to enjoy other people’s successes more than your own. Coach always talks about it being a place to play the game you love, with the girls you love, for the God you love. I think that’s it, really.” Finally, I was getting somewhere. I knew I had to talk to fifth-year senior Brett Faro. If he couldn’t wrap up the answer with a neat little bow, no one could. Faro’s mere existence on this year’s men’s team nearly didn’t happen. After breaking his left leg as a freshman — twice! — Faro had an extra year of eligibility for this year, but he almost didn’t take advantage. After all, following last year’s fairy tale ending and most of his best friends moving on after graduating, who could blame him? “I just didn’t know if I could be in it 100 percent, both physically and mentally,” he said. “I wasn’t playing a ton, I didn’t have a huge role, and we had just gone out on top. It couldn’t have been any better. I knew that, if I came back, it wouldn’t happen like that again. I mean, I knew it was a possibility, but let’s be realistic. It was nowhere close to guaranteed.” So Faro thought about it. And — before anyone knew there’d be a coaching change — he committed to come back. His first soccer conversation with new leader Brad McCarty was not exactly warm and fuzzy. “He told me there were no promises how much I’d play, or if I’d start,” Faro remembers. “He just wanted me to be a leader. But at that point, it didn’t even matter to me. My decision to come back really had nothing to do with soccer. I just wanted to provide leadership to a new team, to a new coach. It was kind of a new chapter in Messiah soccer, and I thought I could help mentor the younger guys.” It’s pretty funny hearing those sentiments now. Faro became one of Messiah’s most irreplaceable players this season, at times seemingly willing his team to win behind his relentless, dogged style in the midfield. During the championship game, I stood in front of the Calvin student-section, smiling as they implored their team to focus on Faro. “We’ve got to stop number five, he’s their best player!” one chest-painted fan said. “He’s killing us!” Faro — who eats, drinks and sleeps humility — found those comments amusing. “If teams are keying on me, that’s a very good thing for us,” he said. But, this was truly Faro’s championship, something I told him while embracing on the Blossom Athletic Center turf late Saturday night. At that moment, his body spoke volumes: Fighting back tears, physically unable to stand, he’d left it all on the field. For five years straight. “There’s no better place to be than at Messiah College playing soccer,” he told me. “I think it has to do with guys that truly love each other, buying into what we do here, and the coaches making leaders out of young men. You can almost see guys start to get it as they go through the program. I know, for me, my entire approach to what’s important on the soccer field completely changed during my time here. There’s an environment here that fosters leadership. It’s unique and it’s special. And I don’t think it happens at very many other places.” As I thought back to glancing around the championship pitch late Saturday night, seeing former players laugh and hug current players, women’s players hugging men’s players, parents hugging other parents, Faro’s comments brought things into clarity: For Messiah soccer, it’s simply a matter of understanding what’s truly important, and bringing others along for the journey. Messiah’s incredible success was slowly starting to make sense. Like so many other fans, I’ll miss watching seniors like Horst and Faro play. But next year will provide another chapter, with new leaders guiding new players, who will eventually become the programs’ ambassadors themselves. Whether or not a championship comes with them? That’s not really the point at all. So ... whenever you’re finished ... you can pass the Kool-Aid. I think I'm about ready for a swig.
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