Post by HCTigerMan on May 11, 2005 12:09:06 GMT -6
www.nola.com/search/index.ssf?/base/sports-18/1115740542271080.xml?nola
Technically, Martin Montero is a soccer dad, and though he knows the most, he says the least, not like those crazed parents one often reads about. Let the kids play, he says, without pressure or expectations. Let them be kids.
Let them have everything he couldn't while growing up in Alajuela, Costa Rica, where a hard, 12-hour-a-day life in the sugarcane fields still is predestined for kids like Montero once was, the son of a laborer whose family lived in a meager shelter owned by the refinery.
Let them laugh the way he laughed, playing as long as the sun allowed, but let them do so on pristinely cut and chalked fields with expensive cleats on their feet, picking up sod with each step. Let them never feel the pain Montero felt playing barefoot for hours on scalding pavement, kicking around a soccer-ball cover stuffed with rags, grass and rocks, spending the night popping blisters so that he could torture his feet and fill his soul the next day.
Let James and Jonathan -- Montero's two boys -- experience life as an American child and inherit the educational and athletic opportunities he wanted for them when he sacrificed fame and notoriety over a decade ago to move to New Orleans. Montero exchanged his job as a Costa Rican First Division professional soccer player (the NFL of his country), staying in the fanciest hotels and performing in front of 35,000, to work as laborer hanging sheetrock in a foreign place with its strange language, hoping his first few paychecks were enough to bring Erika, his wife, to the United States.
"I love this country," he said. "Here, anything you want, you work hard, and you can have. My kids, they don't even look at the $15 dollar soccer shoes. They want Adidas, Nike. Eighty dollars. I buy it for them because it makes me feel good. It makes me remember why I came here."
Like his kids, Montero plays for free now, too. A three-year veteran of the New Orleans Shell Shockers, a team in the Premier Developmental League where players are not compensated so that college athletes can play and maintain NCAA eligibility, Montero has been able to somewhat fill the competitive void. Unlike the weekend ISLANO games, the Shell Shockers travel, practice, have games broadcast on the radio and play in front of crowds in the hundreds.
"It feels good, and it feels different for me to be watching him instead of him to be watching me," said Jonathan, who'll be a freshman at Bonnabel High School in the fall. "I like to see him play and the people cheering for him."
Photographs and fading newspaper clippings are all that's left from the life Montero left behind. Like so many kids in Costa Rica, Montero's love for soccer blossomed on concrete, the only surface smooth enough to guarantee a fair roll of the ball and that would ensure nothing would puncture players' bare feet. One kid, he remembers, had an actual soccer ball.
"Maybe his parents had a little more money," Montero said. "It was real expensive, and it was the only one. Everybody took care of the ball. I remember, that was the best to have that."
And it lasted forever. It had to.
When the ball had a hole beyond repair, Montero's friends removed the inflatable core and filled the shell with materials from home and outdoors, making it much heavier than the recommended inflated weight and providing a maraca-like noise every time it was kicked. Goal posts were nothing more than hand-crafted mounds of grass and straw. Up to 20 kids on each side. No refs. No out of bounds.
A professional scout, simply driving by, Montero explains, somehow sifted through this maul of kids and discovered Mauricio Montero, Martin's older brother, and offered him a professional tryout that led to a productive career highlighted by a roster spot on Costa Rica's 1990 World Cup team.
Martin followed suit, turning professional at 17 and enjoying a 10-year career with four professional squads that played not only within the country but also throughout Central America and Europe.
"When I traveled to play in other countries, I'm rich. Completely different. Because in our house, the floor was like this," Montero said, pointing to a patch of dirt where jagged gravel stands in for worn grass. "The bed was not a bed, it was nothing, you know? When we go to the hotel, it's air-conditioned, the bed is made, at breakfast you see a whole meal, they have everything. It changed my life.
"Where I grew up, I never even dreamed to fly. I would see a plane and say, 'That's not for people like me, that's too high for me.' "
Unfortunately, Montero's income made it impossible to recreate the on-the-road lifestyle. At most, Montero said, he was paid the equivalent of $700 American dollars a month to play soccer, meaning almost his entire paycheck went to expenses. In 1995, with a job as a laborer waiting for him in the United States thanks to friends of his wife who already made the move, Montero left Costa Rica, temporarily he thought.
The numbers attached to his first paycheck made it easy to stay.
"My son, he started playing at Lafreneire Park when he was 4-years-old," Montero said. "He got uniforms. He played with referees. He played in a field with shin guards on -- everything. I told him, 'Look, you have a good life. You have everything.' When I was his age, I had nothing.
"That's why I love it here. There are so many opportunities for the family. I have everything."
. . . . . . .
William Kalec can be reached at wkalec@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3413.
Technically, Martin Montero is a soccer dad, and though he knows the most, he says the least, not like those crazed parents one often reads about. Let the kids play, he says, without pressure or expectations. Let them be kids.
Let them have everything he couldn't while growing up in Alajuela, Costa Rica, where a hard, 12-hour-a-day life in the sugarcane fields still is predestined for kids like Montero once was, the son of a laborer whose family lived in a meager shelter owned by the refinery.
Let them laugh the way he laughed, playing as long as the sun allowed, but let them do so on pristinely cut and chalked fields with expensive cleats on their feet, picking up sod with each step. Let them never feel the pain Montero felt playing barefoot for hours on scalding pavement, kicking around a soccer-ball cover stuffed with rags, grass and rocks, spending the night popping blisters so that he could torture his feet and fill his soul the next day.
Let James and Jonathan -- Montero's two boys -- experience life as an American child and inherit the educational and athletic opportunities he wanted for them when he sacrificed fame and notoriety over a decade ago to move to New Orleans. Montero exchanged his job as a Costa Rican First Division professional soccer player (the NFL of his country), staying in the fanciest hotels and performing in front of 35,000, to work as laborer hanging sheetrock in a foreign place with its strange language, hoping his first few paychecks were enough to bring Erika, his wife, to the United States.
"I love this country," he said. "Here, anything you want, you work hard, and you can have. My kids, they don't even look at the $15 dollar soccer shoes. They want Adidas, Nike. Eighty dollars. I buy it for them because it makes me feel good. It makes me remember why I came here."
Like his kids, Montero plays for free now, too. A three-year veteran of the New Orleans Shell Shockers, a team in the Premier Developmental League where players are not compensated so that college athletes can play and maintain NCAA eligibility, Montero has been able to somewhat fill the competitive void. Unlike the weekend ISLANO games, the Shell Shockers travel, practice, have games broadcast on the radio and play in front of crowds in the hundreds.
"It feels good, and it feels different for me to be watching him instead of him to be watching me," said Jonathan, who'll be a freshman at Bonnabel High School in the fall. "I like to see him play and the people cheering for him."
Photographs and fading newspaper clippings are all that's left from the life Montero left behind. Like so many kids in Costa Rica, Montero's love for soccer blossomed on concrete, the only surface smooth enough to guarantee a fair roll of the ball and that would ensure nothing would puncture players' bare feet. One kid, he remembers, had an actual soccer ball.
"Maybe his parents had a little more money," Montero said. "It was real expensive, and it was the only one. Everybody took care of the ball. I remember, that was the best to have that."
And it lasted forever. It had to.
When the ball had a hole beyond repair, Montero's friends removed the inflatable core and filled the shell with materials from home and outdoors, making it much heavier than the recommended inflated weight and providing a maraca-like noise every time it was kicked. Goal posts were nothing more than hand-crafted mounds of grass and straw. Up to 20 kids on each side. No refs. No out of bounds.
A professional scout, simply driving by, Montero explains, somehow sifted through this maul of kids and discovered Mauricio Montero, Martin's older brother, and offered him a professional tryout that led to a productive career highlighted by a roster spot on Costa Rica's 1990 World Cup team.
Martin followed suit, turning professional at 17 and enjoying a 10-year career with four professional squads that played not only within the country but also throughout Central America and Europe.
"When I traveled to play in other countries, I'm rich. Completely different. Because in our house, the floor was like this," Montero said, pointing to a patch of dirt where jagged gravel stands in for worn grass. "The bed was not a bed, it was nothing, you know? When we go to the hotel, it's air-conditioned, the bed is made, at breakfast you see a whole meal, they have everything. It changed my life.
"Where I grew up, I never even dreamed to fly. I would see a plane and say, 'That's not for people like me, that's too high for me.' "
Unfortunately, Montero's income made it impossible to recreate the on-the-road lifestyle. At most, Montero said, he was paid the equivalent of $700 American dollars a month to play soccer, meaning almost his entire paycheck went to expenses. In 1995, with a job as a laborer waiting for him in the United States thanks to friends of his wife who already made the move, Montero left Costa Rica, temporarily he thought.
The numbers attached to his first paycheck made it easy to stay.
"My son, he started playing at Lafreneire Park when he was 4-years-old," Montero said. "He got uniforms. He played with referees. He played in a field with shin guards on -- everything. I told him, 'Look, you have a good life. You have everything.' When I was his age, I had nothing.
"That's why I love it here. There are so many opportunities for the family. I have everything."
. . . . . . .
William Kalec can be reached at wkalec@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3413.