Bellevue University’s Brian Friend, who starred on high school soccer pitches around Louisiana for New Iberia Senior High, was the only Bruin to play all 19 matches in 2008. Friend was a workhorse the season before, too, as he played in all 18 matches, starting in 15, and as a red-shirt freshman the season before played in the team’s 21 matches and scored 12 goals.
Between 2008 and 2009, however, the warrior from the South experienced an injury that affected his wheels. A bone in his left foot (the fifth metatarsal) broke in two places.
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Then, the senior said, he made it worse playing on it later in New Orleans. New Iberia soccer fans saw him playing, hurt foot and all, in several matches in the adult league this summer at Assembly Christian School.
Two months after the injury, x-rays showed the break that will require surgery after the season.
“I’m going to play through it. I’m going to stick it out,” Friend said near the midway point of his final collegiate season. “The athletic trainer here is really, really good.”
The team’s athletic trainer rose to the occasion with a steel cast that is inserted in his left boot each time he suits up. Friend praised the effort that allows him to play the beautiful game.
“I’ve bled purple-and-gold, Bruins’ colors, for five years now. I might as well play through the pain,” he said. “If I get a good whack (on the left foot), I feel it. (But) I love the game enough to play through the pain.
“Coach said ‘As long as you’re fit, I’ll play you.’ I have to give it to my coach. He’s letting me go and letting me be -- how he would say -- a super sub. I’ve scored two goals - even on a broken foot.”
Matt Briggs, entering his third year as head coach of the Bruins, said midway through the season, “Casey, regardless if he’s got an injured foot or not, is important to us. (But) because of his injured foot he can’t play 90 minutes.”
“I run enough for two players,” Friend said. The statement wasn’t bravado. It was fact backed up by Briggs, who called him “an advocate for Louisiana.”
Friend’s value to the team prompted the coach to move him into a starting role for pivotal matches, such as against Hastings College, a 1-1 draw on Sept. 16. His other starts were against Embry-Riddle on Sept. 11; York on Oct. 3; Oklahoma Wesleyan on Oct. 24; and Saturday in the regular-season finale against Central Christian College of Kansas. Bellevue won all four.
Friend and his Bruins teammates concluded the regular season 11-3-1 on Saturday and 3-0 in league play. The Midlands College Athletic Conference tournament starts Nov. 13.
Bellevue beat Central Christian 5-0 Saturday at Tranquility Park in Omaha. Friend had an assist in the game.
Friend, 23, is majoring in sports management with a minor in business. He redshirted his first year, a baby-faced young man fresh out of NISH who also played on select soccer teams in Lafayette.
Like Friend did at NISH under head coach Kevin Hardy, who coaches a program that has risen in prominence on the prep soccer scene statewide with each successive year, he has made an impact as a student/athlete at the small NAIA college in the Midwest.
Casey’s collegiate soccer lore grew by leaps and bounds last season when he scored the game-winning overtime goal in “a big, big game” against 12th-ranked Madonna. It was one of three “important” goals he scored to go along with a handful of assists in 2008.
“I was just an average player last year,” he said, modestly.
Briggs calls his senior from Cajun Country a “good footballer.” That’s a high compliment from a coach who hails from across the big pond in England.
“I’ve known Casey since he’s come into the program. His first year here was my first year in the program,” he said.
“He’s a great kid, a great young man. He’s brought us a lot of success on the field. Technically he’s clean and he’s comfortable with his back to the goal.”
There were ups and downs and disagreements, as there invariably might be between fiery student/athletes and coaches, during their time together, both have agreed in the past. Apparently, they eventually began to appreciate what each brought to the pitch.
“Our relationship has grown much better than it has in the past. This year he’s been really lenient with me,” Friend said.
Briggs remembered a 3-1 victory over Westminster on Sept. 13. Bellevue was nursing a 2-1 lead when he inserted the New Iberian for the last 10 minutes against the Griffins.
“He scored our third goal. It was, like, 20 yards,” the coach said. “That tells you about the character and the quality of the kid that he’s able to go in in an important game and put in a goal in a short matter of time.”
Friend got his first start the previous weekend. He played up top on the wing in the team’s new formation -- 4-3-3.
Bellevue used to play a 4-4-2. The Bruins have turned offensive-minded with a veteran up top when it counts.
What about his future after college?
Briggs said, “I think the kid can go and make a fantastic coach. I think his father (Brian Friend of New Iberia) used to coach. I think he could continue to play a little bit at some level after college.”
Friend said he plans on exploring all possibilities. He has an agent, Chris Penton, a distant relative, he said, and his name has gotten around the soccer circles coast to coast.
He hopes to get a professional tryout and go from there.
“Like I told Pop, if any time’s the time to do this it’s now. After college, I still want to play. I love it so much,” he said. “I’m going to go to a tryout and see what I can do. I’d love to further my soccer career. If it don’t work out, I’ll have a degree to fall back on.”
Mostly, though, he wants to go home to Acadiana.
“I miss my family. I miss my friends. I’m tired to be living 16 hours away,” he said.
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