Nolan Wirth still remembers when he told his dad, defender Kelly Wirth who still plays masters soccer with Comox, that he wanted to be a goalkeeper.
“A typical defender, he said don’t do it — goalkeepers are crazy,” recalled Nolan Wirth, with a chuckle.
“I guess I’m crazy.”
Like a fox, and quick as one in the crease, too.
“For any goalkeeper, that moment from going into the nets on an occasional basis, to when your team needs a full-time goalkeeper, becomes the defining moment. The position just attracted itself to me,” said Wirth.
It led to the NCAA and the Oregon State Beavers of the Pac-12 Conference, the Canadian U-20 team in CONCACAF qualifying play, a first pro contract signed with player-owner and former Chelsea star and Ivory Coast World Cup player Didier Drogba and the USL’s Phoenix Rising, and now as the first Island player signed by Pacific FC of the Canadian Premier League.
With the signing, Pacific FC’s crease tandem looks to be set with Wirth and Mark Village, although the team will almost certainly bring into camp other goalies to push them.
The 27-year-old Village, who came out the Fraser Valley University Cascades to play pro in the USL with FC Cincinnati, was signed earlier.
“Mark [Village] and I met with the Whitecaps program. I’ve trained with him quite a bit. Our paths have now reconnected. It’s looking like a good partnership.”
Pacific FC now has two goalkeepers and 10 position players signed, including former European pros and multiple Canada-capped Marcel de Jong and Marcus Haber.
The 24-year-old Wirth has played previously on the Island with the amateur Victoria Highlanders of USL-2 and most recently as an all-star ’keeper with Vic West of the Vancouver Island Soccer League, the latter where brother and striking midfielder Liam Wirth also plays.
“I knew the CPL was coming. It gave me motivation and a real goal to aim for,” said the six-foot-one Nolan Wirth.
“I made that my main goal as early as last summer. And now it has happened. The CPL is going to be a massive opportunity for Canadian players to have a domestic pro league right at our doorstep. That is especially so for the youth coming up. It provides an opportunity to make it to the next level. I learned from every level. Oregon State gave me the chance to play against big-name Pac-12 schools like Stanford and UCLA. The Highlanders were also important in my growth.”
As was Wirth’s first pro experience with Phoenix Rising in the USL: “Didier Drogba was very humble. He got to know everybody on team and became very interested in all of us, despite the fact of who he was.”
The biggest impact on Wirth, however, was in coming from a Comox soccer family.
“My brother would shoot on me in the backyard, which was very convenient,” he recalled.
“We were very competitive. I remember once, dinner evolved into a push-up contest.”
It is that competitiveness Pacific FC will be counting on in the crease when it opens its inaugural CPL season April 28 at Westhills Stadium against HFX Wanderers of Halifax.
