A NBGin' EXCLUSIVE!

We have done it, it is unbelievable (We here at NBGin' are speechless, without speech). American soccer player Chris Rolfe, starting forward for the Chicago Fire of the MLS agreed to sit down with NBGin's Tim Keating. The following text is what ensued.

Chris Rolfe was never the biggest kid on the soccer field.

He was also never highly scouted by big name universities. For him, soccer was a passion, not a career.

When he entered the University of Dayton in the fall of 2001, he was simply another undergraduate who happened to play for the soccer team. Eventually that would all change. These days Rolfe is a starting forward for Major League Soccer's Chicago Fire.

Rolfe, who was raised in Kettering, began playing soccer at the local YMCA at the age of 7. As most little brothers do, Rolfe wanted to follow in the footsteps of his older brother who played soccer. From a very young age he knew that he was talented.

"I think I was always quick and good with my feet," Rolfe said. "For the most part, technically, I've always been pretty good."

Rolfe's skill became apparent when he reached the high school level. He attended Fairmont High School in Kettering, where he recorded 30 goals and 72 points as a junior. He finished his high school career with 73 goals, and First Team All-Area, Player of the Year and First Team All-Mideast honors.

But even with impressive high school statistics, Rolfe was not heavily recruited.

"Wright State was interested, Cincinnati, Dayton and a couple of schools out on the east coast that were smaller were interested," Rolfe said. "So really when Dayton came and said that they would give me a scholarship, it was a pretty easy choice for me."

His future set for the time being, Rolfe attended the University of Dayton with the hopes of getting some playing time during regular season games. To his surprise, when traveling with the team to their first preseason tournament in Bowling Green, he found himself in the starting eleven. Rolfe went on to start in 19 of 20 games that year for the Flyers and finished the season with five goals and eight assists.

Rolfe spent a majority of his last two years at UD with nagging injuries, but still managed to finish sixth all-time in UD history with 31 goals and 25 assists. Throughout Rolfe's time at UD, he had planned on graduating and spending his days behind a desk in a financially focused environment.

But that all seemed to change when it came time for the 2005 MLS Superdraft.

On Jan. 14, 2005, during his senior year at UD, Rolfe was taken in the third round of the draft by the Chicago Fire with the 29th pick overall.

"Initially when I saw my name pop up it was excitement and then it quickly turned to some type of anxiety because I quickly had to change my mindset and figure [out] what I was going to do about school," Rolfe said.


Rolfe excelled in his rookie campaign, eliciting nominations for Rookie of the Year by tallying eight goals and five assists in 29 appearances. He started 21 games that season.

Rolfe has continued to play well in the MLS. He was selected as the Sept. 25 player of the game for his two-goal performance against the Los Angeles Galaxy broadcast as part of ESPN2's MLS Game of the Week.

When asked about the best part of being a professional athlete - "Other than being done with work around 12:00 in the afternoon every day?" he joked - Rolfe said it gave his friends a reason to get together and come watch him play.

Rolfe, who has represented his country in four international appearances with the U.S. National Team, stated that in the future he would consider playing in a league a step above the MLS if the right opportunity presented itself.

As a competitor, he would jump at the chance.

"I want to push myself as hard as I can and see how far I can take this," he said. "You know, [see] how good I am.”

Davy

“God, what does it want now?”

Its name was Davy—yes, after Davy Jones, the immortal piece of man candy God made so unbearably adorable, middle-aged women would still tack his poster above their bed if their husbands didn’t beat enough sense into them. Davy—that thing now, not the leader of a cheap knockoff band who enjoyed more sloppy seconds than Bob Crane—sat several feet from my then twitching right foot, my slipper the only cushion it would feel when I punted it over our—my— breakfast nook.

“Cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh,” it panted gently, over and over and over again from the back of its throat, pink tongue squirting through black lips and crooked yellow teeth. Each small exhalation assaulted my nostrils in rogue clouds of humid, day-old Eukanuba Small Breed. You wouldn’t think something so blindingly repugnant could come from an unholy rat so small. Its beady black eyes never once left my face, not even to shoot the most temperamental of glances toward the brown sugar-cinnamon Pop-Tart I shoveled down my gullet, brown thimble of a tail twitching in sharp, incessant spasms.

“Cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh.”

The fuzzy parasite’s grease spot looked particularly shiny this radiant morning. It had some sort of nasty skin condition on its back Janice dropped two-hundred bucks a month to take care of. Yet, I couldn’t remember a single time she came with me to the ER when the poison ivy growing in her garden puffed my face worse than a fourteen-round beating from Apollo Creed.

I ran my nails hard through the ten-day stubble growing on my chin, and gave Satan’s wicked brethren one last narrow-eyed glare before going back to my coffee and newspaper. She couldn’t stand when I slurped my coffee. We used to laugh about it, like how I made fun of her for snoring when she drank too much, but she eventually glared at me like every swig was a crack against her mother’s girth.

“Cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh.”

I asked her for a kid, she brings home a dog. That’s a pretty fair trade if you ask me. Not a slobbery, jaunty yellow lab that likes to wrestle and play fetch and can be walked without fear it’ll fall into the sewer, but a goddamn Yorkie, for Christ’s sake. One that broke its leg jumping down from our two-foot-tall ottoman. One that shits tootsie roll-sized turds impossible to find come poop pick-up day. One that only pisses on my side of the bed, and hides under the couch for at least an hour when you turn on the blender.

I pulled the note from the front pocket of Janice’s robe, its fuzzy turquoise frills keeping me warm ever since they shut off the heat. What kind of a name is Spencer, anyway? Every time I hear it I think of this spoiled only-child who lived on my court when I was ten. Everything he wanted in the world, his parents got him: Matchbox cars, dirtbikes, birthday parties behind the home dugout at Wrigley. He also wanted my Mickey Mouse wallet, and, of course, he got that too, snatched it right out of my room, the little shit. Luckily, I was ten and only had two dollars and a piece of gum to my name, but it was the principle of the thing.

“Cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh.”

Brown biscotti colored. She didn’t want a brown Yorkie. She wanted the brown biscotti one. It was sad. She treated it, a living thing, like some kind of disposable fashion accessory; of course, it had to match everything else perfectly. Her obnoxiously large purse was white leather, purchased with the store credit she earned when she returned the sharp Coach bag I got her for her birthday.

“Oh. Thanks, but it’s a little too big,” she said, returning home three hours later with an even bigger bag (and poochie, as always) in tow.

I always hated the banquets. She dressed me up in some tux she had shipped in from New York, or Paris, or San Francisco for the evening, clothing I’d never even been blessed with laying my eyes on before I was told to wear it. She paraded me around, the starched shirts getting stiffer every year, until she was through with me, on to some geriatric with a country club membership and a 501K. She always held a glass of champagne or white wine when she danced, always smiling, youthful curls bouncing as some wrinkled hand spun her round and round and round…

“Cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh…cihh.”

I wondered what Janice was doing. Spencer probably had a nice car, a convertible even. I could see the two of them driving down the Pacific Coastal Highway on a sunny day, the wind blowing her blonde curly locks wildly through the air like some sort of beautiful sea anemone during high tide, Spencer probably sporting some tan, botoxed face accessorized with the kind of glasses I knew I could never make work.

I reached my hand down and patted Davy’s head. He stopped panting and stretched out his neck to meet my fingers. His eyes closed in the kind of intoxicating bliss dogs must feel when you scratch them behind the ears.

“You’re all right, aren’t you,” I said.