By Dylan Butler
Their friends go to Jones Beach, relax on family vacations or work a couple of hours a week in part-time summer jobs. But for Queens residents Alessandro Acquista, Doug Navarrez and Shaun Higgins, the summer months are anything but lazy as they prepare for the college soccer season in the fall by playing for the Brooklyn Knights, an amateur soccer team in the Premier Development League of the United Soccer Leagues.
“It’s the best way to get ready for college, this is a college-level division,” Acquista said. “Because [Alessandro’s older brother] Carlo played here I thought it would be the best way to get ready for college. Half the kids have played college soccer.”
Acquista, like Navarrez, is about to begin his first year of Division I soccer. He followed in his brother’s footsteps from Holy Cross to St. John’s. Heeding Carlo’s advice, Alessandro decided to get prepared for the rigors of college soccer by playing for the Knights, who play their home games at the newly renovated Metropolitan Oval in Maspeth.
“The difference between high school or club soccer and this league is that here everyone you play with and against is very good,” he said. “In high school and a club, you have a few good players. Here everyone is good. Every day you’re competing for a spot.”
The transition for Acquista at first was difficult. After starting in the center of midfield for the Catholic city and state championship Holy Cross team, playing time for the Knights has been hard to come by for the Whitestone resident.
“It was difficult, I got frustrated at first, but you just have to stick with it,” he said. “You’re going to have a chance here, but you have to be ready. It was a big transition.”
It was also a big transition for Navarrez. The midfielder from East Elmhurst starred for Newtown and was the PSAL’s Iron Horse winner, awarded to the top soccer player in the city.
“I thought it would be easy but when I started practicing and playing in games, my ideas totally changed,” said Navarrez, who will join Knights teammates Alex Cuba, Rinaldo Chambers and Ernest Murduskayev at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, N.J. in the fall. “It’s not the same as playing in high school or on a club team. The game is much faster and physically the guys are so much bigger. Every time you get hit it hurts.”
Higgins is also in his first year with the Knights, who compete in the PDL exclusively as an under-23 team. He said it was during a trip to Italy with the Brooklyn Italians club team, featuring several of his soon-to-be Knights teammates, during Easter vacation when the Hofstra junior midfielder decided to play for the Knights, who are currently 9-3-1 and in second place in the PDL’s Northeast Division.
“When we play a lot of the other teams, they have a lot of veterans,” said the Whitestone native. “One reason I chose to play here is because they are kids who are all in the same boat, kids like me. I think because we’re young, this team is more fit than other teams and we play a lot quicker than other teams.”
The PDL serves as a feeder system — a minor league of sorts — to Major League Soccer and Navarrez and Higgins got their first taste of professional soccer last week when they, along with Knights teammates Hemir Niebles and Carlos DeSousa, were invited to train with the New York/New Jersey MetroStars.
“It was a totally different level,” Higgins said. “To see the guys I watch on television and to play with them was crazy. [I was in awe] before in the locker room, but once we got on the field, it was just playing soccer.”
Added Navarrez: “It was a great experience, unfortunately I was unable to go back the next day [because he had to take a Regents exam] but it was fun for me to see how a professional team trains. It was great, I couldn’t believe I was training with a professional team.”
Reach Associate Sports Editor Dylan Butler by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 143.
