SANDY — For fun and excitement, nine former Jordan High classmates put together a soccer team entry in a city recreation soccer league. They named their team The Replacements.
And just for kicks they recruited one rival Brighton soccer player to join their ranks. This ragtag bunch gets together on Tuesday and Thursday evenings to play indoor soccer. A few are married, most are single, but they have one thing in common: "Just getting together to have fun."
But this team is not without talent. Headed up by Clay Christensen, who plays on the Brigham Young University soccer team, he enrolled another BYU team member (Hugh Vanwagenen) to come out and join the fun. Vanwagenen's other connection to the team is that he served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with Ryan Durrant — a former Beetdigger who did not play soccer while in high school.
Durrant plays goalie on the team, and his claim is: "I have no soccer experience, but I wear an authentic Swedish jersey for good luck."
Christensen led the Beetdiggers to the state championship in 2002 and was named MVP. In that championship game Jordan downed a Brighton team on which Blake Hillstead played and remembers butting heads with Christensen throughout the match. He later served an LDS mission with Charlie Jewkes — a former Beetdigger footballer — and so Hillstead was admitted to the team.
The Replacements lost a couple of matches early in the season but recently came back and defeated the No. 1 team in the league by a score of 6-5. It did take the Brighton Bengal to score the winning goal in that game.
"I kicked it low and hard, just like my coach at Brighton taught me," Hillstead said,
This game featured confrontations, and tempers flared. But this is where Scott Yost comes in. Because he is not a returned missionary — the only one on the team who is not — he acts as protector and enforcer.
He said, "My role is to create a couple of bumps and bruises. And to be there if a fight breaks out."
He also doesn't mind his nonreturned-missionary status — but as a student at the U., he did say, "Just don't mention BYU."
He goes by the nickname "Baller," and no one remembers how far back the roots to that moniker go. But a more apt nickname might be "Brawler," as his 6-5, 275-pound frame certainly backs up his claim to the "enforcer" role.
He is a former all-state tackle on the football team.
Other team members and former Jordanites include Nick Shreeve, Jared Horton, Tim Lougee, Matt Proctor and Brandon Bingham.
Bingham leads the team in yellow cards, red cards and getting thrown out. In fact, he was absent from the team picture because he had already gone home after an early exit
from a game.
This team may include more former Beetdigger football players than soccer players, and their style of play reflects that. All in all this is a group of outstanding young men, and Yost — despite his menacing image — is really a big teddy bear at heart and relishes acting as a defender of his comrades.
As for Christensen playing with a bunch of hacks, he says, "My friends made fun of me every year in high school for playing soccer."
Hillstead added, "We are just washed up old guys getting together."
E-mail: wjewkes@desnews.com