Smits relishes chance to start
Eddies backup ’keeper to play as No. 1 Parker serves suspension
John Smits initially became a goalkeeper when he was 12 or 13 years old so he could continue to play with his buddies in youth soccer.
Smits was an overweight child with an asthma condition, which, combined with the summer humidity in Toronto, started to limit his ability to run. When he wasn’t going to make the cut as a left midfielder any more, he quickly discovered his athletic ability made him a pretty good goalie.
“I made the first team from there,” said Smits, who hit a growth spurt when he turned 14 and later became one of only four players from his group of friends to continue on to postsecondary soccer and the only one currently playing pro.
Smits, who is now six-footfour and 185 pounds, will make his first start of the North American Soccer League season for FC Edmonton at 2 p.m. Sunday against the reigning champion Tampa Bay Rowdies at Clarke Field.
Starting goalkeeper Lance Parker was given a red card in last week’s game against the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. That not only resulted in Parker being immediately ejected, but also automatically suspended for the next game.
The 24-year-old Smits came off the bench to face a penalty kick in his first appearance of the season on Sunday and was later named to the NASL team of the week.
Penalty kicks are actually considered “a no-lose situation” for a ’keeper because “the shooter is expected to score,” according to FC Edmonton head coach Colin Miller.
The first thing Smits did upon running on the pitch was pick up the ball “so I could feel the ball.” It also forced Fort Lauderdale Strikers forward Stefan Dimitrov to spot the ball again and give Smits a chance to study the shooter’s eyes and look for “tells.”
“I think he just got a little bit nervous, because he kicked right down the middle,” Smits said. “It wasn’t a well-struck penalty. I dove to my right, he hit it down the middle, a little bit to the right, and I was able to block it with my foot.”
Smits wasn’t as fortunate on a second penalty kick later in the game. He guessed correctly (which he has done on all four of his NASL penalty kicks) after seeing the Strikers line up to the same side on the 18-yard line and dove to his left, but Carlos Salazar, a 32-year-old midfielder from Colombia, was able to kick the ball just past the goalie’s fingertips into the corner of the net.
It was the only goal Smits allowed in a 1-0 loss that dampened Edmonton’s hopes of winning the NASL’s spring schedule. The Eddies have a 2-3-2 win-loss-tie record for eight points, five back of the league-leading Atlanta Silverbacks.
“The only difficult part was right away get (used to) a high speed, a high tempo of the game,” said Smits, who immediately noticed a difference from the practice games he has played during training.
Smits played seven games with the Eddies last season after a stellar career at the University of Toronto. He was a shutout machine with the Varsity Blues, leading the Canadian Interuniversity Sport with 11 shutouts in 14 league games in 2009 and recording nine more clean sheets in each of his next two seasons while leading Toronto to three consecutive appearances in the national championship.
He drew the attention of former FC Edmonton technical director Joe Petrone at the 2011 CIS championship, when he had a standout game in a 2-1 quarter-final loss to the University of Alberta Golden Bears, stopping one of two penalty kicks he faced in that contest as well.
He also fashioned a shutout in his pro debut against the Silverbacks last year, and posted a 2-4-1 record over seven NASL starts, most of them in the second half of the season.
Unfortunately, three of his losses were to the Rowdies, who are 3-2-2 for 11 points.