San Jose Earthquakes 3-1 Real Salt Lake: The view from the bleachers.

There will come a time this season when the performance of the 2012 San Jose Earthquakes will falter, and the fans will begin to wonder if the team’s early season success will translate into a spot in the playoffs. For the time being, I choose to live in the moment, bask in the glow of the team’s 5-1-1 record and wear the satisfied smile of a fan whose team is atop the MLS Western Conference after toppling RSL last Saturday.

My evening kicked off in the Epicenter where I bumped (gently) into Shea Salinas, who was sporting “Please Do Not Touch” across his freshly mended left collar bone. He seemed in good spirits – but then he was clutching a huge bag of chocolate chip cookies. Ellis McLoughlin and Joey Gjertsen graciously ‘scarved’ the necks of five-year-bleacher-veteran season ticket holders, though with game time temperature approaching 80 degrees, said scarf spent most of the evening carefully folded beside my seat cushion. As I assembled in the stands with my fellow fans, we chuckled as we remembered the great deluge that accompanied last year’s home game against RSL – this was most definitely the opposite.

The first hot day of the year turned into a balmy evening, as the sun sank slowly behind the Ultras as the players prepared to kick off. Any advantage to the Quakes in the first half with their backs to the sun were counteracted by the equally dazzling fluorescent orange kit worn by the RSL goal keeper Nick Rimando – think Mango Tangelo tropical Skittles – an unusual tactical move I thought. The game unfolded with the Quakes confidently controlling the ball, pressing on goal only to be denied on several occasions by the excellent deflection skills of Rimando. The straight red card issued to Espindola in the 29th minute reinforced the optimism among the fans, and we were rewarded just before half time with a Khari Stevenson header: 1-0 Quakes.

The good cheer was subdued by a well-crafted goal by Kyle Beckerman, who effortlessly weaved his way through the Quakes defense, placing the ball in the net past Jon Busch in the 53rd minute. As the half progressed without any Quakes success on goal, more than one fan harkened back to the disappointment of last season’s scoreless home tie against a ten-man LA Galaxy with diminutive midfielder Mike Magee in goal. Compared to that game, maybe even because of it, we saw a much more positive coaching response: firstly, forward Steven Lenhart replaced midfielder Sam Cronin in the 61st minute; secondly, after Lenhart was pulled down by the ‘last man’ Jamison Olave, who earned his own red card in the 69th minute, defender Ike Opara was replaced with forward Alan Gordon. Obviously, the Quakes were aiming to capitalize on RSL’s unusual, and increasingly stretched 4-4-0 formation.

It’s not clear if Olave was ambling, moseying or sauntering as he left the field, but his tortuously slow exit contributed to the six minutes of stoppage time that turned out to be crucial in ensuring the Quakes eventual victory. After the final substitution for Baca with Garza in the 82nd minute, Dawkins and Wondo netted headers in the aforementioned stoppage time, with the final tally on the night 3-1 in favor of the Quakes, 100 appearances for Jason Hernandez and 100 MLS victories for Frank Yallop – congratulations both.

Saturday’s performance against erstwhile conference leaders Real Salt Lake was heartening on several levels. It was particularly encouraging to see proof of how deep this year’s roster really is – with the loss of four key players (Bernardez, Chavez, Corrales and Salinas) any other season the squad might have been considered shorthanded. This year, Hernandez, Moreno, Opara, and Dawkins stepped in seamlessly sustaining the possession football we had seen in the Vancouver and New York games; the Quakes played at least as equals to RSL, one of the better teams in the league over the past couple of years. Even though it took a while to nail down the victory, I was also encouraged to see that the goals were scored by three different players: Stephenson, Dawkins and Wondo.

My own ‘man of the match’ was Steven Beitashour, who put in another tireless and creative performance that earned him two assists on the night in addition to his solid defensive work at right back. Honorable mentions also go to Tressor Moreno, who was very calm, confident and poised on the ball, and Justin Morrow who made several incisive and productive runs deep down the left flank. Fans were excited to see the MLS debut of Sam Garza, and while he didn’t have much time to leave his mark on this game, he left RSL’s remaining defenders in his wake. I had seen Garza put in a tireless effort in the reserve league on Easter Sunday, where he earned an assist – with the effective play of defensive replacements Opara and Hernandez, I was once again reminded of the value of the reserve league, where all three had recently played together.

The final relief of the late game winners was still being articulated by the veteran season ticket holders as we lined up down the touchline waiting for our souvenir photograph in the North End goal. There are also many seasoned veterans among the fans, appreciative of the efforts of the front office to recognize our support over five years in the bleachers at Buck Shaw; our squad is just as deep.  There will surely be challenging times ahead this season, sometimes there will be failure and disappointment, but right now the Earthquakes squad is playing well and the roster looks deeper than ever before – deep enough to weather potential storms. With so many hands available to be called on deck, it’s full steam ahead.

Where Are They Now? The Vaguely Unsettling Giant Inflatable Jersey at Buck Shaw Stadium.

As the third home game of the season is on Saturday, April 21 (7:30PM) approaches, once again there will be a gaping hole at the southeast corner of the pitch at Buck Shaw stadium – and I don’t just mean the absence of Shea Salinas and Big Vic Bernardez.   I hadn’t realized how I had gradually become accustomed to the vaguely unsettling giant inflatable Earthquakes jersey that the fans passed on their way into the stadium through the George Best Gate.

The mighty inflatable cut an imposing figure, with bulging shoulders and a glistening 40 foot chest, emblazoned with the team’s former sponsor.  Why did I find it so unsettling?  Maybe I watch too much Mystery! on PBS, but in darker moments, it appeared to be an over-sized dismembered torso from Gulliver’s Travels.  I imagined other body parts distributed around various locales – people walking their dogs would uncover giant inflatable shorts in the Muir Woods, giant inflatable legs would be discovered in storage lockers still wearing their giant inflatable boots, and a giant inflatable head would wash up on the shores of China Beach. I also have an irrational fear of giant inflatable objects – as a kid I watched reruns of the oddball suspense series The Prisoner, with its menacing inflatable balls that suffocated escaping prisoners as they made a break for it across the windswept beach.  These huge balls were not to be trifled with – they were swift, relentless and could asphyxiate in seconds (much more punishing than a three match suspension).  For this reason I often found myself inspecting the restraints on the giant inflatable jersey before I could get settled in the bleachers.

So when the giant inflatable jersey left town when the Amway bubble burst, I found that I still had many unanswered questions:  How big was the shirt? What was the shirt made from?  How many pounds of pressure were needed to inflate its full and bulging biceps?  How long did the shirt take to inflate?  Where was it kept between games?  But above all – I want to know where it is now and if the club has any future plans for it?

Talking over beers with friends and fellow fans, we’ve had fun considering how the giant inflatable shirt might be re-purposed for the city of San Jose.  Most ideas focussed on the bouncy traits of inflatables – castles are standard issue at kids’ parties, and a soccer shirt would lend a certain challenge to little ones to stay on top, but would surely make most parents cringe in fear of hospital bills for broken limbs.  My engineering buddies pointed out the advantage of that much air in such a large volume, and which could be exploited for superlative sound insulation – perhaps  it could be installed between the new stadium and the railroad, so the 1906 Ultras’ gameday chants won’t be drowned out by the noise of the trains.  While the monster shirt might fit Big Vic off the peg, I wondered  if it could be tailored down for  the slighter 150 pound frame of Shea Salinas – a smaller, personalized version to wear in training would protect his fragile clavicle as he gingerly returns to the pitch – something along the lines of this Norwegian bubble soccer.

One intriguing possibility is the Swap of the Table jersey exchange run over at the Top of the Table web site.  The jersey swap is a social experiment among fans, copying the exchange of jerseys by players the end of games with the call for jerseys broadcast on Twitter over a two week transfer window - hopefully the fans’ jerseys are not as sweaty.   CLS’s resident kit nerd Robert Jonas recently traded an Earthquakes training top and a pair of FC Dallas shorts for a Philadelphia Union home jersey and a personalized Peter Crouch Portsmouth FC kit.  At Around the League, the kit-nerdiness of our managing editor has been long recognized – indeed, there was an unsubstantiated rumor circulating that Robert was preparing to trade for the giant inflatable Quakes jersey at Swap of the Table – one can only surmise the reason why, but ATL proposed one possibility:

Rumors of the acquisition were quickly nixed in the Jonas household – insufficient closet space – though a possible yard installation was briefly considered, perhaps serving as an annexe to house his extensive kit collection.

So, in honor of Earth Day this coming Sunday April 22, 2012, show your environmental awareness and consider how you might recycle your own soccer gear – Swap of the Table is an option for jerseys, or donate your gently used  equipment to charities such as Jean-Marc Alexandre’s for kids in Haiti.  If the fans ever discover the secret location of the (presumably) deflated jersey, I invite your imagination to speculate how the vaguely unsettling giant inflatable Amway jersey might be recycled into something of use for the San Jose soccer community.

New England Revolution player profile: Zak Boggs – unusually versatile, on and off the field

One of the brighter spots in the difficult 2011 New England Revolution season happened when Zak Boggs beat out the Quakes’ own Chris Wondolowski for the MLS W.O.R.K.S. Humanitarian of the Year award.  Unaccustomed to losing awards last season, chalk one up for Wondo, who scored the winning goal in this weekend’s 1-0 victory over the New England Revolution, opening the 2012 San Jose Earthquakes campaign.  Given that Zak was injured for this season’s opener and did not travel with the New England team, it might be considered a somewhat hollow victory if  you perceive a rivalry between the two players.

As a Quakes fan, I was disappointed for Wondo in 2011, but as a scientist in the biotechnology industry what particularly caught my attention was the reason for Zak Boggs’s victory as Humanitarian of the Year – he received the award for volunteering his time at the laboratory bench in a prestigious cancer research laboratory.  That’s not something you see every day, and I wanted to find out more.

Zak attended the University of South Florida on a soccer scholarship, where he played a crucial role in the Bulls’ first ever BIG EAST championship in 2008, finishing as the team’s second-leading scorer and earning All-Tournament Team honors. He was acquired by the Revolution in the second round (31st overall) of the 2010 MLS SuperDraft, and in 2011 made twenty regular-season appearances, including sixteen starts – eight as a forward, two in central midfield and six on the right wing.  Here are the first clues as to the versatility of this young man – he can fulfill several roles on the pitch, where he’s an energetic attacking combination midfielder and forward.

On and off the field Zak has gained a reputation for his steadfast work ethic, and the choice of a BS in Biomedical Science is by no means a soft academic option.  On behalf of Center Line Soccer, I recently had the opportunity to talk to Zak about his academic selections.  Early in our conversation Zak clearly articulated his love of science and personal drive to help patients.  His  decision to study biomedical science was was heavily influenced by his parents’ careers:  “My father is a surgeon, and my mom is a registered nurse practitioner… To be honest there was never anything else I wanted to study.”  His mom’s influence also introduced him to volunteering, which he continued under his own steam at the Moffitt Cancer Center while he was in graduate school at USF.

Yes, I said graduate school – it turns out that Zak is as diligent in the classroom as he is agile on the soccer field.  Zak graduated early from the University of Southern Florida  with a 4.0 average earning degree in biomedical sciences in May 2009.  He was nominated by USF for the highly-competitive and prestigious Rhodes, Marshall and Fulbright academic scholarships – a significant achievement in itself.  Not one to let his professional soccer career get in the way of graduate school, he continued, and successfully completed, his masters degree in marketing after he moved to Boston when he was selected by the Revolution.

Once Zak settled in Boston, he researched which local laboratories were working in his primary medical interest of angiogenesis (the process by which growing cancer tumors develop their own blood supply).  Serendipitously, the laboratory  in which Zak now works is in the same institution where the study of angiogenesis began – “I had wanted to get involved in the actual lab research, and so what better place to do it than Children’s Hospital Boston?”  Once or twice a week, rather than sit back and relax after hours of morning practice in Foxboro, Zak hops on the train into Boston to put in four hours of laboratory work.  Since 2010, he has been snapping on latex gloves, donning  a white coat and settling in for the afternoon at the research bench in the laboratory of Dr Marsha Moses, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Vascular Biology Program at Children’s Hospital Boston.  Obviously, this is no academic backwater – this is a hard working, well-respected and extensively published research laboratory.

Zak’s journey to the Moses laboratory began with a prospective email and ended with an interview in which he took just five minutes to land the job. “She just wanted to know what my goal was out of this, and basically she said, ‘once I saw that you were and Eagle Scout, that was all I needed to know,’” he chuckled.  Many volunteers work with the patients at Children’s Hospital Boston, but Zak’s science background and passion to acquire laboratory experience surely contributed to him being hired into their research projects.

At the laboratory bench (which he keeps uncommonly tidy by the way) Zak works on sample preparation to measure diagnostic proteins in urine – and for biotech geeks that includes spectroscopy, zymography, and Western blots.  Just like soccer, medical research is a team effort – “Without a doubt it’s a team effort…[I’m] in the lab, but it goes beyond the lab…there are so many people that you don’t even see.”  All the while, handling samples from the littlest patients has led to a new perspective on his place in the scheme of things  - “I was doing some stuff for the brain cancer project last year, and you get a vial of spinal fluid and urine that comes with it, and you see how old these kids are, two and three years old having brain tumors,” he said seriously, “certainly [perspective] is one of the main things I get out of it.”

For the time being Zak remains the receiving end of the medical treatment process, impatiently waiting for his ankle to heal so he can return to the field.  He continues with the same laboratory endeavors that earned him the 2011 MLS Humanitarian of the Year award.  The unusual route by which he expresses his humanitarian side has also paid him back with a chance to retreat from Foxboro, meet people with a different outlook, and which he appears to find refreshing – “I’ve made some great friends there,” he enthused.

Whether or not Chris and Zak will duke it out for this year’s MLS humanitarian award remains to be seen – Chris Wondolowski will continue his support of Street Soccer USA – a non-profit organization that seeks to end homelessness through sports.  The unbalanced MLS schedule means that the next award might be the only other time that the pair will meet in competition this year.  Whatever happens, the humanitarian efforts of both players benefit so many people that while they might be considered rivals, in my eyes, neither player loses.

At the close of our conversation I asked Zak where he thought all of his academic and laboratory training would take him when his playing days are over.  He replied, “I don’t want to limit myself because I don’t know what’s going to happen, so I don’t want to lock into one certain thing, but I definitely want to be a doctor someday. It’s always been a goal of mine to do that – I don’t know in what capacity, or what kind of doctor, but I definitely want to go to medical school.”  With his academic achievements, hands on experience, and drive to succeed, undoubtedly it will be difficult for any medical school to turn him down.