USL Feature
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Brandon Heembrook was one of the most experienced players at the USL PRO Combine presented by Umbro, bringing with him a great amount of experience in the USL PDL from his time with both the Toronto Lynx and Ottawa Fury, making 10 appearances for the Fury last summer. He spoke last week with USLSoccer.com about his experience in Bradenton, Fla., and what he took away with him as he tries to reach the professional ranks.
USLSoccer.com: Coming in, did you have any expectations as to what the combine would be, and did it live up to those?
HEEMBROOK: I had a few expectations, I had a friend that went to it last year [Kyle Manscuk] so I knew what it was about, I knew it was going to be an opportunity for a lot of doors to be open, but I didn’t realize, especially for ‘keepers, the amount of knowledge the staff had, and I was actually surprised by the number of people that were in attendance. The number of doors that were actually open were a lot more than I thought originally.
USLSoccer.com: You came down from Ottawa, and that program has done a really nice job of helping players stay in shape and develop. What’s it been like to be part of the Fury organization, and what have they offered you in the way of development?
HEEMBROOK: They just give you a good place to train. You train five times a week, their coaches have been phenomenal, Steve O’Kane for two years in a row to Carl Valentine two years ago, who’s with the Vancouver Whitecaps, and going back to Steve O’Kane this upcoming summer. The fact that we train every single day of the week, five days a week, we’ll get the odd day off if we had two games on the weekend, but the way they treat you, they brings players in, they put you up, they give them jobs to work in the summer.
I’m a local boy, but my family moved away to Calgary, out west, and they still put me up with a family, they got me in touch with a golf course, I got a job there to work, so they just make it a great place to come and play, and it’s the attitude the team has that makes you want to train harder and better. They give you a lot of support, and it leads to developing better soccer players.
It runs all through the youth programs. I’ve been there since I was playing for the U15 team, and I was playing up a year, and they always allowed me to play up a year, and I remember being 17 and playing U17 twice, and then they lost their backup ‘keeper for PDL, so as a 17-year-old they put me on the bench. They traveled me, trained with the PDL team, I’d be on their roster, go to the games, they really do work well as an entire club, from the youth system all the way up.
USLSoccer.com: Do you think that helped you when you came to the combine, that you had that level of experience, that you had played in the PDL for such a stretch of time that you were ready to move on to the next level?
HEEMBROOK: Definitely, this was my fourth year in the PDL, two with Ottawa and I spent two years before that with the Toronto Lynx, and I played Super-20 with them as well. Just being 18 and player Super-20, being 19, 20, 21 and playing PDL against 22-, 23-, 24-year-olds, there’s a big gap between high school and college, and a big age difference, a big gap. Even with the pros, there’s a bit of an age gap there. Some players get intimidated by playing with older, bigger, faster, stronger players, but playing in the PDL gave me four years to get used to that and get used to playing with older people. It doesn’t faze me anymore if a guy is 25, it’s just a number now, we’re all equal, and it’s prepared me to play with the best of the best, really.
USLSoccer.com: What’s the biggest thing you took away from the USL PRO Combine?
HEEMBROOK: The little details, for sure, that we talked about with the ‘keepers. On and off the field, especially off the field, there’s so many little things as you look to go forward to be a pro that you have to be aware of. They made it a lot more clear than I thought before of all these little details, like you obviously know how to eat right, but you don’t know the mental aspect of it, the gaps between the pros and where we are now, and how to close those gaps.
Being Canadian, having some coaches from Team Canada there like [Tony] Waiters and them was really nice to have them there, but then to also get the U.S. perspective from [USL National Technical Director] Peter [Mellor], who had the list of the 10 keys of success for a goalkeeper, that really helped me a lot. I knew some of them, but I didn’t realize how important a few of them are, and it goes back to the details of the game that I learned from him especially.
USLSoccer.com: What’s next for you? Are there any teams that have expressed interest yet?
HEEMBROOK: I got an email from Dayton yesterday … we’re going to contact them in the next couple of days and see how serious they are before I fly out from New York to Ohio. Other than that, we talked a bit with FC Edmonton, because that’s where my family lives now, they’ve signed two ‘keepers for this year but they said since I was relocating to Edmonton that they might take a look. I talked with Steve O’Kane in Ottawa, and they said they already have two ‘keepers but they’d be more than glad to bring me back in case I didn’t get anything else, so that’s kind of where I am right now, just hoping for something, but if I don’t I still have PDL for another year, which is pretty good.