[nas] Best collegiate player ?

A Front Seat For a Backline
St. John's center back Wingert quietly becoming the best U.S. college
player

By John Jeansonne
Newsday - Sept. 3, 2003

Numbers may not be the best place to start. Chris Wingert plays soccer,
where numbers not only are few and far between (teams routinely win, 1-0,
for example), but also are virtually without meaning, compared to more
mainstream American sports. What statistics there are in soccer can't
give a
glimpse of control or dominance or skill level, particularly if one's
position is on the defensive back line.

So numbers won't do him justice. But, if you must know, Wingert scored
nine
goals and assisted on eight others in 62 games through his first three
seasons at St. John's University. Perhaps just as unimportant: Wingert,
21
years old, is a thoroughly human 5-10 and 160 pounds.

None of that explains how he enters his senior year as perhaps the
strongest
candidate for the Hermann Award, college soccer's version of the Heisman.
(St. John's, 0-2, plays its home opener against Rutgers Sept. 10.) Nor
that
he has, according to U.S. Olympic coach Glenn (Mooch) Myernick,
"continued
to force his way on our roster on a pretty regular basis" as Myernick
considers his player pool for the 2004 Athens Olympics. Testimonials work
better than arithmetic.

"He's very, very quick with his feet, and he doesn't play recklessly,"
said
Tom Bouklas, Wingert's high school coach at St. John the Baptist in West
Islip. "Skills-wise, he's far above the norm for a backliner."

"Chris has some dominating qualities," St. John's coach Dave Masur said
of
his 2002 all-Big East center back and Academic all-America. "He's
intelligent. He reads the game well, he can control things from the back
half [of the field]. He's tactically very good, he's a great listener, a
great learner and a great leader."

Masur, himself an all-American center back in his days at Rutgers, could
go
on. And does. "Chris has good vision. Communication skills. The ability
to
see things early, to squeeze the field appropriately, to be a very good
one-v.-one defender."

"The thing that allows Chris to compete on this level," said Olympic
coach
Myernick, himself a Hermann Award winner at Hartwick College more than
three
decades ago, "is that he has a very good understanding of the game. He
reads
the game well and knows how to play within himself. He doesn't do things
that will get him in trouble. And he's a competitor."

He is good enough that U.S. Soccer officials wanted to immediately
immerse
him in the federation's residency program in preparation for the
Olympics.
That would have meant signing a pro contract of modest size (roughly
$30,000) and foregoing the rest of his college career to train (and
perhaps
play) for a Major League Soccer club. Wingert has chosen to stay the
college
course - he will graduate in January with a communications degree - so
both
Masur and Olympic coach Myernick went to some lengths to arrange training
sessions with MLS teams all summer, anyway.

How this happened; how a fellow who spent most of his youth in Babylon
Village being small for his age and, frankly, more tuned into the
basketball, baseball and football scene like most suburban American kids,
could wind up being an elite practitioner of an international sport ...

Well, it's the old nature vs. nurture discussion. Genes or environment?
And
the answer seems to be: Either/or/Both.

Of course there is plenty to the notion that Wingert's father, Norm, was
involved in both aspects of the sociological equation. Norm not only
played
professionally in the early days of the North American Soccer League, and
passed along a basic hyper-active physical lifestyle (at 53, he recently
ran
his first marathon), but he also lent his intense interest and
considerable
connections in the sport.

Norm knew Chris' high school coach and his potential Olympic coach before
Chris was born. The first, Bouklas, he met while giving soccer clinics;
the
second, Myernick, shared an alma mater, upstate Hartwick.

Bouklas, whose college sport at Adelphi-Suffolk (now Dowling College) was
basketball, became soccer coach at St. John the Baptist High School in
West
Islip in 1972 "because nobody wanted the job." That was the year before
Norm
Wingert was drafted to play goal for the NASL's Philadelphia Atoms and
also
took "a real job" as sociology and psychology teacher at West Islip High.

The two met some time later and joined to conduct soccer camps, as
Bouklas
proceeded to turn St. John the Baptist into a powerhouse that in 1993,
based
on a No. 1 ranking by USA Today, declared itself national high school
champion.

"Tom is self taught," Norm Wingert said. "He didn't know anything about
soccer, but he became fixated with the game. He'd study tapes,
everything,
and he's become the best soccer mind around."

Chris still was a young lad - "maybe 8, 9 years old," he said - when he
began participating in Bouklas' camps.

Chris did see Bouklas' 1993 championship team often; Norm worked games as
a
referee. But it was soccer friendships that influenced him to enroll at
St.
John the Baptist, he said. Once there, he was subjected to Bouklas' task
with "many, many players," the coach said.

"To get them to see the field, recognize the game around them, not put so
much into their skills but into the game.

"Chris was a late developer physically," he said. "He could've had more
[colleges recruiting him] if he'd matured sooner. A number of coaches, at
top, top programs, said, 'I don't know if I can give him a full ride,'
then
saw him the spring of his senior year and said, 'Ohmigod.' St. John's had
the foresight to see where he'd be in another year."

Chris guesses that 100 schools made at least casual contact with him. But
Masur "was the first college coach to ever send me a letter," he said.
"When
I was in 9th grade. It wasn't a personal letter, but that was the year
they
won the national championship."

It happened that Norm and Chris Wingert saw that championship game,
arranging a side trip to the NCAA Final in Richmond, Va., while visiting
Chris' older sister Kerri, then attending the University of Virginia.
Masur's recruiting persistence, plus Masur's impressive program, brought
Chris to St. John's. And then, after a year playing in the midfield, as
he
had in high school, Chris was moved to defense. Norm Wingert was mostly a
dad in this adventure, Chris said.

"Ever since I was little, he was like an assistant coach on my club
teams.
But my dad wouldn't necessarily show me stuff. Maybe when I was real
young
he showed me how to kick the ball, but after, he would just encourage me
to
do things like little drills, juggling the ball, touching the ball."

They would kick a ball around the back yard, and Chris' mother, Noreen,
recalls some damage to a new bathroom that just may have been the result
of
playing soccer in the house. But, "Mostly, what he did was take me and my
buddies to go play somewhere," Chris said.

Norm, after all, had been a goalkeeper - a different world from playing
the
field - "so he wasn't really showing me moves. He'd hop in the goal and
I'd
shoot at him; to this day, he does that. I could score on him, but I
don't
think he ever was trying too hard.

"I only saw him play as hard as he could maybe twice. One time we had
gotten
somewhat of a pickup game going indoors. A full field game, I must've
been
in about eighth grade. My dad was diving, sliding all over, making saves,
ripping up his sides. He tried that day. But he couldn't play for a while
after that. He couldn't sit down for a while, with the raspberries all up
and down his body."

Chris Wingert obviously hasn't fallen far from the competitive tree. "He
is
extraordinarily determined," said St. John's Masur. "Very positive, very
caring for his teammates and himself. He takes responsibility. He has all
these characteristics, which really have nothing to do with soccer, which
he
got from his parents."


-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - Consolidate POP email and Hotmail in one place

---
See all of today's Soccer News Links at:  http://www.sams-army.com/
NAS is hosted by America Kicks (http://www.americakicks.com)
To subscribe or unsubscribe: http://nas.americakicks.com
To post, send an email to nas@americakicks.com