Soccer is Zohn’s Zone
From espn.com
By Marc Connolly - ABC Sports Online
All the national magazines, the talk shows and the gossip columns got it all wrong about Ethan Zohn. He’s not the “Survivor: Africa” winner who is The Soccer Guy. It’s the other way around.
Ethan Zohn wants to help popularize soccer in the U.S. He’s The Soccer Guy who happened to win Survivor.
Any 20-something athletic type who knows the words to “Ole, Ole, Ole” and who brought his Hackeysack as his luxury item would have represented the entire sport as the stereotype regardless of his or her background. With Zohn, it’s different: He’s the real deal.
That’s what you call a college coach and goalkeeper who has lined up in the opposite goal away from Tony Meola. That’s what you call a guy who has walked out into a stadium in a foreign land and heard the frenzied cries of 50,000 screaming fans (some MLS players still haven’t seen that many people watching them while not in REM mode). That’s what you call a guy who once saved a shot off the gifted right foot of Italian star Roberto Donadoni.
That’s also what you call a guy who didn’t let the Survivor hype get to the group of young men he coaches as an assistant at Fairleigh Dickinson (Teaneck, N.J.) that made a miraculous run through the NCAA Tournament all the way to the quarterfinals.
So if you want to know what cow blood tastes like or what it’s like to be the guy version of Survivor I cutie Colleen Haskell to throngs of adoring females addicted to the popular show, then look elsewhere. The questions we have for the 27-year-old Survivor: Africa start and end with, well, “Keller or Friedel?” for starters.
“I’m a Keller fan and I always have been,” said Zohn, who lives in New York City with two of his buddies. “As a goalie, I think he commands a better presence on the field. He’s more confident and I think the players feel more confident with him. When he steps onto the field, everyone is like, ‘Whoa, Keller’s in net.’ Friedel is a great keeper, don’t get me wrong, but I think sometimes a little frantic.”
Even while being baptized into popular culture in a whirlwind few weeks of appearances since he steamrolled past 15 other contestants in Kenya to win the million dollars, Zohn is still up on the same information the normal internet message board junkie lives and dies by. He talked about Friedel’s Blackburn Rovers squad facing Keller’s Tottenham Hotspur side across The Pond, the health of Clint Mathis and the hiring of Thomas Rongen to coach the under-20s.
When he called in the first time, Zohn even had Newcastle vs. Leeds playing in the background. Talk to him for even five minutes and it is clear that the Beautiful Game is his deepest passion. Having a bank account that features many commas will now only push him further into the game, not away from it. Hear that Hollywood?
“It makes it far easier to coach because I don’t have to worry about the money part of it,” said Zohn, who also assists the women’s soccer team at FDU for coach Peter Gaglioti. “Now I can coach because I love coaching. Or I can choose not to coach and I can try some other angle of soccer, which has always been something I’ve been interested also.”
Being well-spoken and camera-friendly might help Zohn break into the world of broadcasting, actually. Calling MLS games or doing feature segments around the World Cup or National Team games are something he mentioned as dream jobs, along with having his own show that is modeled after “Futbol Mundial” on Fox Sports World.
At the same time, coaching is now in his blood after four years under Seth Roland, this year’s Mid-Atlantic Region Coach of the Year, even though he never thought it would be when he was bouncing around the USISL and D-3 leagues pursuing his dream.
“Coaching was a natural progression for a struggling professional,” said Zohn, who played with the Cape Cod Crusaders and the Hawaii Tsunami, as well as the Highlanders Football Club in Zimbabwe. “I started coaching mainly to stay in shape for the fall to get ready for the next season. I could train with the keepers and play 11 a side. Then I said, wow, I kind of like this, so I continued coaching.”
Every year, he thought he’d move on, whether it be a new team or for the security of a full-time job, but the Call of the Wild kept bringing him back. Each July, he’d call coach Roland and ask if it was okay to come back, even though he was getting paid enough money to simply pay the tolls on the George Washington Bridge and the Jersey Turnpike.
With his team losing in triple overtime to the eventual national champion North Carolina Tar Heels, Zohn knows if he left FDU now that it would be at the program’s peak.
“If I were to stop – I haven’t decided yet – it would be like Jordan leaving when he’s on top of the show,” he said, tongue-in-cheek. “I never made it to the NCAAs as a player and never in three years as a coach, and then this year we make it to quarters. I’m not going to leave it forever. No way. But I might not come back this year to see if I can pursue other soccer opportunities.”
Notice how he’s not saying anything about the movies or Vee-jaying or making cameos on sitcoms ad nauseum. As he said the night he outlasted Kim Johnson in the final vote for the dough, Zohn wants to help get more kids involved in the world’s most popular sport.
“I’ve been in touch with a lot of inner city/educational soccer programs,” he said. “A bunch of people have contacted me, which is great. I was going to start one on my own, but I think it’ll be quicker and more beneficial if I linked up with one that’s already there and kind of boosted its popularity. I don’t know if I have that much power, but hopefully I could bring my name to something to help popularize it.”
He wants to become an ambassador for a sport that has few recognizable figures in this country. Zohn knows that he doesn’t have the clout to lift soccer into the mainstream with the likes of the NBA, Major League Baseball or, by God, the NFL, but he knows that he has name and face recognition with many an eyeball after his 39 days spent in the Shaba National Reserve with cameras in his face 24/7.
“There is no one to identify with other than Mia Hamm, maybe Cobi Jones and maybe Alexi Lalas to promote the sport of soccer,” he said. “I’m not saying I can do that by any means, but 27 million viewers know me as “Ethan: the Soccer Guy.” A lot of those are kids, a lot of those are girls. Maybe something can happen out of that. Maybe I can use my name to help popularize the sport.”
Developing into an all-state goalkeeper for Lexington (Mass.) High School in the early nineties before playing for Vassar College, Zohn knew that he had to continue playing until someone told him not to suit up any more. The life of a lower-level professional soccer player contains no glamour. It makes minor league baseball players look swanky.
“The one thing that people can compare it to is a struggling actor,” said Zohn. “You rarely sign a contract for more than one year. You’re never sure who you’re going to play for. You get paid by the game – three hundred to three hundred-fifty bucks. You’re living in a team house with 10 other guys, or on a floor. You’re traveling by bus and eating at McDonalds on the road. Basically, it’s a second job at that level. You need something else to survive.”
Zohn instructed at camps and clinics to help supplement his playing and coaching income, in addition to working at a bar in New York City and doing freelance work for a brand identity company.
He’s not too proud to say he had to borrow money from his mom, Rochelle. She knew his love for the game wasn’t a passing fancy, or one he cold give up on, especially after making the Boston Bulldogs roster in the A-League after an outstanding stint for the Crusaders one summer.
His last major stint as a player came last spring as a member of the U.S. National Maccabiah Team, as he was in 1997. If that’s the end of the line for Zohn as a soccer player, he’s fine with it. He says that because of his unique experience in Zimbabwe.
“That was the highlight of my career,” said Zohn. “It was going to a foreign country and playing with probably the best players I’ve ever played with. In order for me to fulfill that quest within me, I needed to feel like I was a real professional. At Crusader matches, you’d get 1,000 people at a game at the most. You never would feel that huge rush.”
After struggling for four months abroad, Zohn made the first-team and experienced a high that CBS couldn’t even recapture if they tried.
I stepped on the field and there were fifty-thousand screaming fans,” he said, still in awe of it. “Everyone knew who I was because I was one of two white people on the team. You don’t get that in MLS, you don’t get that in D-3, you don’t get that in A-League.
“I said to myself, ‘If I break both my legs in this game, I’ll be ok.’”
It’s that same attitude that Zohn has applied to his life, and ultimately came through to millions of strangers watching him handle himself with class, dignity and the proper perspective each week.
If he can’t help carry the torch and promote the game of soccer, no one can.
Marc Connolly is a senior writer for ABC Sports Online. He can be reached at marc.connolly@abc.com.
Editor’s note: After our soccer writer, Marc Connolly, bragged about scoring a goal on Ethan Zohn “back in the day,” we felt only he could do this story justice. Connolly and Zohn graduated the same year (1992) out of high school, and played in the same ODP and club team circles around Eastern Massachusetts in the early ’90s. Connolly said that Zohn was regarded by most everyone as the top goalie in the state their senior year playing for Lexington High School. Little did anyone know he’d one day be known for his survival skills stopping “shots” from a goat farmer and a school teacher rather than those of a gifted striker at the top of the 18.