No regular Joe

There are some jobs few of us want.

Installing roofs in summer. Emptying hospital bedpans. Cleaning houses.

Sports has such a job. It’s called playing goalkeeper.

The whole team might play perfectly, but if the keeper allows a goal it’s all for naught.

Theirs is a lonely fraternity with two characteristics: they leave their regard for health and safety on the sideline, and when the other team scores they are tougher on themselves than any coach, teammate or overzealous parent.

Master those two skills and you get to slip on the stinky gloves and get muddy.

Volunteer goalkeepers on my men’s over-30 soccer team are as rare as front-page stories about soccer on the sports section of our daily newspaper. Our coach, an experienced litigator with guile and skills of persuasion, has in three seasons failed to coax a single enthusiastic keeper from our ranks.

Excuses fly at our embattled coach like a hail of simultaneous penalty kicks.

I pulled a stomach muscle.

Play goalie? With these knees?

I’ve got bursitis.

We’ve had some gifted and dedicated goalkeepers, but their stays were fleeting. Several seasons ago our coach managed to find a good guy willing to step up.

He’s an average Joe named—well, Joe. He played sports (although not soccer) as a kid, and he was game to slip on the old stinkies and grab the ball by the horns.

From his first dive through fire ants and mud Joe embodied the soul of our team, and his confidence grew with each match. He learned to aim his punts, bellowing his target’s name as he booted the ball skyward. “Eddddiiiieeee!!!!”

His saves kept us in games we should have lost. Still, he carried like a burden of shame every goal the opposition scored, always promising to do better.

But then it was time for Joe to step up to a larger commitment he’d made. In July 2007, Capt. Joe Barnett of the 769th Engineer Battalion reported for his second tour of duty in Iraq. A veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Joe, along with his men, would provide logistics support for 500 soldiers.

Joe missed two of his young son’s birthdays and his anniversary. “Just part of what it means to be a deployed citizen soldier,” he says.

A bad day used to be if someone like Dr. Curt Chastain of the Eagles slipped a goal past him, or when some ranting opponent lost his cool and started yelling at a ref. In Iraq a bad day became deadly serious—like when his battalion lost one of its own, Sgt. Terrell Gilmore. “He was a silent hero that did his level best every day on every mission,” Joe told me in a recent e-mail. “A true hero.”

A good day? “When my soldiers received their end-of-tour awards,” he said.

This summer, Joe returned to his own end-of-tour award: His wife Courtney and their 5-year-old son Blaine embraced him in a wave of relief most of us will never know.

Also relieved at Joe’s return were two dozen guys who relish the freedom to run around a soccer field like kids, all thanks to guys like Joe Barnett.

Read more of Capt. Joe Barnett’s interview and see pictures from the 769th Engineer Battalion’s July 14th homecoming at here.