Here’s a thought that boggles the mind—Chance Eggert was almost a cross-country runner.
We’re talking about one of the true whirling dervishes of Colonial Valley Conference soccer. A guy who played hurt and sacrificed his body in countless ways to gain possession of the ball for the Steinert High School boys’ soccer team. A defender who teammate Mike Fornaro said “nobody wants to play against.”
And yet, the team almost missed out. Eggert and his older brother Dallin played rec soccer growing up, and while Dallin stayed with the sport when he entered high school, when Eggert arrived a few years later, he was undergoing a metamorphosis. So he attended summer practices for the cross-country team.
“I don’t know,” Eggert said with a laugh. “I was going through this phase, I wanted to be Buddhist, find Nirvana, find that peace, trying to be different. It wasn’t me.”
So at the last minute, Eggert switched to soccer, and the Steinert boys’ squad must be glad he made the change. This year, he was part of a defensive unit that allowed just 15 goals and posted 11 shutouts in Steinert’s 14-4-3, Colonial Valley Conference Valley Division-winning season. The Spartans also made it to the semifinals of the Mercer County and Central Jersey Group III tournaments.
Eggert was the starting left back on the Spartans’ freshman team, and he stayed at that same spot during his next three years on varsity. He was the guy you never heard of, despite the fact he made a lot of noise on the field.
“The kid will lay his body out there for his team and not look for headlines,” coach Todd Jacobs said. “It’s never ‘Me me me.’ He’s all about team. Every team needs a Chance Eggert.”
Why? Jacobs said he’s the type of player that “a team rallies around.”
“If you have guys playing at his level, beating kids to the ball, never backing down, you’re gonna win games,” he said. “He probably is tired of it, but I point it out so much during halftime talks, asking them, ‘Who is gonna start playing like this kid plays?’”
Jacobs was right. He was tired of it.
“I’m like ‘All right, I think they get it by now, you don’t have to keep saying it,’” Eggert said with a laugh. “I’m just like, ‘Come on guys, I just do what I can.’”
He does it with severe back pain, which makes it even more impressive.
Last spring, Eggert underwent surgery for a slipped disc in his back and missed his entire junior season. And while he thought that would make him healthy for soccer, it wasn’t the case.
He had the surgery in March, followed by a two-month recovery process. From there he started walks and slow jogs.
“Over the summer, I started to train again,” Eggert said. “I didn’t lift any weights; that’s how I hurt it in the first place. I’m done with weight lifting. I was fine in the summer, and soccer started, and it happened in the preseason.”
“It” was another slipped disc, the same one he had surgery on. But he never thought about sitting out.
“No way! Not at all,” he said. “Are you kidding me? My senior year? No way I might not play.”
He played, and with the same passion and toughness he always displayed despite playing in “quite a bit” of pain.
“I’ve had his injury before,” Jacobs said. “It’s painful. I know it’s acting up but you would never know it with him. It says a lot about his character, how he’s a driven individual. You can’t take him off the field. I could live with him for a couple mistakes because the good is going to blow the bad away with him.”
Eggert is “a warrior,” said Jacobs.
“He puts his heart into everything,” he said. “When we tell the player to leave everything on the field, drain your tank on the field, he does that game in and game out. And the kid was injured.”
Eggert is also one of the top defenders on Steinert’s lacrosse team. He missed part of his sophomore year with a concussion, which was the only thing that would sideline him.
“I try to not to let injuries keep me out of games,” he said. “The only serious injury I had was for lacrosse a couple years ago. I had a concussion that kept me out. Other than that I try to fight through it as much as I can because I don’t like letting my teammates down.”
Eggert’s effort is so intense that Jacobs actually tells him to take a seat during practice at times.
“I don’t do that with a lot of kids,” the coach said. “But I need him so badly in games I tell him to come off in practice.”
Mike Fornaro, a four-year starter and three-year captain, was the Spartans leader. But even he followed Eggert’s lead on occasion. When an ankle injury sometimes tempts him to take a break, watching Eggert is all the motivation he needs to stay on the pitch.
“He battled every game,” Fornaro said. “He’s a warrior. He’s one of those kids in the locker room you’re always pumped up to see him. Every day in training he’s playing hard. We wouldn’t have gotten where we did without him. He just buries kids every game and cleans things up back there.”
Despite the pain he is in, Eggert has no problem sleeping. He does, however, have trouble touching his toes or getting up quickly from a sitting position. Somehow, that goes away for 80 minutes after school.
“When the adrenaline pumps, I don’t even feel anything,” he said.
Because he enjoys soccer and lacrosse an equal amount, Eggert hasn’t focused on one sport over the other. Jacobs is sure he could be a Division I college player were he to work on soccer year-round.
“He has a lot of stuff that coaches want in players,” the veteran coach said. “We want every player to do what he does.”
Eggert is unsure of his future. He wants to play sports in college but, at the moment, doesn’t know if he wants lacrosse or soccer. He is also uncertain of what school he might want to attend. He was hoping to gain a lacrosse scholarship but after being sidelined last year, recruiters and showcases missed him.
“I know it’s coming up soon and I have to make a decision,” he said. “I’m still torn.”
One thing is certain, however: cross-country is no longer in the mix.
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