As reported on www.nytimes.com
CARSON, Calif. — If Frankie Hejduk wins the first title of his lengthy professional career on Sunday, it will be nice if the stands are filled with dozens of his friends who made the short drive from Cardiff-by-the-Sea, his sleepy hometown 90 miles down the coast.
Frankie Hejduk, the 34-year-old Crew captain, above and at left after Columbus won the Eastern Conference title. When the M.L.S. season ends, Hejduk will trade soccer for surfing in his hometown.
But he figures it will be a game-time decision.
“It’s going to depend on whether the waves are good or not,” Hejduk said on Friday after the Columbus Crew went through practice for Sunday’s M.L.S. Cup matchup against the Red Bulls. “If they are, half my buddies won’t show up.”
But Hejduk seems to understand.
With his shoulder-length, sun-bleached brown hair and surfer vocabulary, Hejduk (pronounced HAY-duck) has for more than a decade looked like United States soccer’s answer to Jeff Spicoli, the surfer-stoner character played by Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” a 1982 movie based on a school not far from where Hejduk grew up.
Not only does Hejduk talk the talk, he walks the walk — all the way out to the end of a longboard.
When Hejduk was growing up, if a soccer ball was not near his feet, a surfboard was under them. He was the national junior high school surfing champion and qualified for the United States amateur surfing team. He attended San Dieguito High, where one of his classmates and best friends was Rob Machado, now a well-known professional surfer.
Though he has played in two World Cups, spent several seasons in Germany with Bayer Leverkusen and has no plans to retire anytime soon, it is not hard for Hejduk to imagine following Machado’s career path.
“Maybe I would have liked to have been a surfer, too,” said Hejduk, whose two children are named Nesta, which is Bob Marley’s middle name, and Coasten, a tribute to his coastal roots. “That’s the same type of lifestyle. They’re traveling all these places.”
Then he stopped himself and smiled.
“The only difference,” he said, “is I’m in cold, rainy Columbus and in Germany, whereas surfers are normally in Tahiti and Fiji.”
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