The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them Read Online Free PDF

ACADEMY
    Y ou ready to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life?”
    The man in front of me—a short, redheaded Irish guy—had an intense, restless energy. He looked like an oversized kid, the scrappy kind that was always ready for a fight. His eyes fixed on me with such hardness, such expectation, that I couldn’t quite tell if the guy was going to train me, or eat me.
    Mom had brought me here, to the GK1 Club, so I could spend a few hours with Tim Mulqueen, the goalkeeping coach of Rutgers University’s men’s team.
    Rutgers was a powerhouse. The previous year, they made it to the NCAA championship final, losing to UCLA in a penalty kick shootout. This year, 1991, they’d been ranked number one. One of their defenders, Alexi Lalas, had earned the Hermann Trophy for the best collegiate soccer player in the nation.
    When Tim Mulqueen offered goalkeeping training for youth players, parents all over New Jersey clamored to give their college-bound hopefuls that extra edge.
    Mom had scraped up $25 for a single session with Mulqueen.
    He looked me up and down. “Okay, Tim. Go get in goal.” I started to jog toward the edge of the field.
    “Sprint!” Mulqueen called after me.
    I sprinted.
    That afternoon, Mulqueen—Coach Mulch, as he was known to his Rutgers players—pushed me harder than anyone ever had. Before then, other coaches might fire four or five volleys at me at a time.
    Not Mulch. He hammered ten in a row, so fast it was hard to get back on my feet between them. The moment I saved one, another was already whizzing past me.
    “Recover faster,” he barked. “You can do better than that.”
    Then he launched five more rockets.
    “Some games are like this,” he said, sending another one flying at me.
    “They keep coming at you.” And another.
    “You’ve got to be ready.” Yet one more.
    He watched me carefully, in a way he hadn’t been watching the others.
    “Move your feet closer together,” he said. I did. He kicked a hard low ball at me, and I stopped it.
    “Good,” he said. “Let’s do some more of those.”
    When my mom came to get me, he ran over to her. “Mrs. Howard,” he said, “you’ve got to bring Tim back.”
    Mom looked down. I knew she wanted so many things for me—warmer mittens, math tutors, sessions with a psychologist who could help me with my OCD. If we couldn’t afford those things, $25 a week for goalkeeping training was out of the question.
    “This is, um . . .” She paused. “. . . a one-time thing.”
    “Your son’s got something, Mrs. Howard. He’s got something I haven’t seen.”
    I let those words sink in. I had something.
    Mom shook her head. It was impossible, of course.
    “I don’t care about the money.” Mulch looked intently at her now. “You bring him back. No charge. Ever.”
    To this day, I believe the offer Mulch made that day—to work with me, for free, indefinitely—was as important, as life altering, as any I’ve ever had.
    As we walked toward the car, Mulch called after me, “See you next week, Tim Howard!” Then he added, sharply, “Don’t be late!”
    I trained with Mulch week after week. Eventually, we’d work together every day, year after year. The man was true to his word: he never asked for so much as one penny.
    Within a year, a prominent New Jersey family put together a club team, hand-selecting the county’s—and then later the state’s—best young players to surround their own son on the field. Mulch was the guy they hired to coach us.
    Mulch prided himself on his notoriously tough practices—he was like the Bobby Knight of youth soccer. His practices were so brutal, in fact, that kids often vomited on the field. Over time, it became a kind of joke: practice hasn’t started until someone has thrown up .
    Sometimes parents complained, but Mulch shrugged. “Sounds like you need another coach, then.”
    He wasn’t going to change his approach for anyone.
    Of all those kids, Mulch pushed me