Kirk Gives CSUN Soccer Team a Concrete Attack

It was just a kick in the thigh. That’s what Joey Kirk kept telling himself. The Cal State Northridge forward had been kicked more times then he could remember since he began playing the sport at age 5.

But this time was different. This time, the hurt wouldn’t go away.

The blow came in CSUN’s final game of the 1984 season. By the time Kirk returned to the soccer field for spring ball, the knee still ached. Rest hadn’t helped. Neither had various forms of treatment.

Trainers couldn’t find anything. At first, doctors couldn’t either. But Matador soccer coach Marwan Ass’ad wanted more tests run.

Finally, Kirk discovered the cause of the pain and it was more horrifying than he had imagined. Damaged cartilage? Ligaments? Either would have been a relief.

Doctors found a tumor the size of an orange near a bone in Kirk’s right leg. He then had to go through a few more agonizing weeks while doctors ran tests to determine whether the tumor was benign or malignant.

Finally, some good news: Benign.

But that was not the end of it.

“I was told that one procedure would be to remove the tumor and fill up the area with bone chips,” Kirk said. “But I was also told there would be a 60% chance of the tumor coming back that way.”

There was another option. Once the tumor was removed, the area could be filled with a mixture that included cement.

That could reduce Kirk’s mobility, but that wouldn’t matter, doctors said, because he wasn’t going to play soccer again anyway. In addition to the tumor, doctors discovered a partial fracture in his leg. Doctors said the fractured bone in his thigh might never be sturdy enough to permit him to return to soccer.

“This is my life,” Kirk said he responded.

It was for a long time. After playing on American Youth Soccer Organization teams in Granada Hills into his teens, Kirk played at Alemany High. In his senior season, the Indians won the Southern Section 3-A championship.

He wasn’t ready to quit. So Kirk went for the cement block, the tumor was removed and he was told to expect to wait a year before he could even start running.

Three months later, Kirk was playing soccer again.

He didn’t exactly return with the sun shining and bands playing. Sneaking back in the middle of the night would better describe his comeback.

Kirk was still living at home in Granada Hills with his parents, Bernie and Barbara, who begged him to listen to the doctors and rest the leg.

So Kirk would go off each week to play for a club team in San Pedro, but tell his parents he was just going to watch a friend. After the game, he would shower elsewhere before returning home.

Finally, after finding he could run without pain or loss of mobility, he told his parents the truth.

They were horrified. “Do you want to be crippled?” he said they asked.

Kirk was stubborn. He had dreamed of a goal beyond the one on the CSUN soccer field, and wasn’t ready to give it up. He wanted to play on the U.S. Olympic team.

So he redshirted during the Matadors’ 1985 season while continuing to improve his skills on club teams.

When it came time to play in 1986, he found yet another obstacle in his path. The school required a medical clearance and the first few doctors he went to wouldn’t give one to a kid walking around with a cement block in his leg.

Finally, he found a sympathetic doctor and back he came.

Not just as a part-time performer. Not just to the role he played before. No, Kirk came back so impressively that Ass’ad may be tempted to require cement blocks in all of his players’ legs.

The numbers are proof.

In his first season, Kirk had five goals and five assists for the Matadors. In his second year, he scored 14 goals and added 12 assists.

Heading into an NCAA quarterfinal playoff Saturday against Seattle Pacific at North Campus Stadium, Kirk is Northridge’s leader in both goals (13) and assists (12). “John Tronson was our big scorer in the past,” Ass’ad said, “but the other teams are keying on him now. So we are using him as a decoy a lot this season.”

Ass’ad can afford to do that with the emergence of Kirk.

“Joey has learned to move to get open,” his coach said. “He takes people on. He may be the best center forward in the nation, but he can get better.

“What drove him? He had no soccer heroes in this country. Joey just wants it. He could make the U.S. Olympic team. If there is ever to be a CSUN player on the Olympic team, he’ll be the one.”

Not bad for a guy whose career ended two years ago.