By BRIAN LEWIS
Q & A with Red Bulls keeper Terry Boss, who is the older brother of Super Bowl-winning tight end Kevin Boss of the Giants.
So how is New York?
“Everything is great. I couldn’t ask for better situation. The time on the field is obviously well-spent. Every day I feel extremely lucky to work with Des (McAleenan, goalkeeper coach), who’s worked with a number of great goalkeepers, and everybody pushes each other. (Starting keeper Jon) Conway is a good coach.”
How is living with your brother?
“Coming home from practice being home with my brother, I don’t think there’s anyplace I’d rather be.” Did you come up playing soccer, or switch from football?
“I grew up playing soccer, playing in the field. I made the switch to goal my senior year; it was a late transition, and I just ran with it.”
Always a keeper?
“It was a situation where the summer before my senior year our goalkeeper got hurt going into tournament. I stepped in and played. Then in school I played in the field for quarter of the season and realized I wanted to go back playing in goal. It just kinda clicked and doors opened up at end of that season.”
(Boss was all-state in his only year as a high school keeper. He went to Tulsa, posting a 0.98 GAA as a senior to lead the team to a No. 8 NSCAA ranking and the NCAA quarterfinals).
I’m told you came from a pretty small town (Philomath, Ore.).
“Very small. I’d say growing up in high school there were probably no more than 5,000 people in my town, two stop lights.
Agricultural town, I assume?
“There’s farming, it was a big logging town.”
What do your folks do?
“My mom works elementary school, working with troubled kids and my dad’s a juvenile probation officer.”
I’m going to go on a limb and assume there was a fair amount of discipline in that house.
“There was, but I think our parents did a god job of letting us experience things, so it wasn’t a crackdown.”
So this is no Todd Marinovich story.
“I don’t know who he is.”
Lord I feel old.
(Laugh)”We’ve always had freedom. Growing up in a small town, there wasn’t too much trouble to get into. It was a great place to grow up; we spent summers bucking hay bales. You learned value hard work.”
(One would think. A hay bale weighs about 85-150 lbs.)
Your brother switch from soccer?
“He grew up playing soccer, too. In the 7th grade he had to make that choice. But my senior year I played basketball and he played as well. But I ended up having to not finish the season because it conflicted with soccer.”
So he just hit his growth spurt earlier? (He’s 6-3, 205)
“I didn’t grow until real late. I was 6-2, but I had a kickboxing fight my senior year; I weighed in at 169.”
Let’s back up –
“I trained as kickboxer. I had a fight to open for a pro fight, but I was still an amateur. I retired 1-0, ’cause I got to a point I was going to college and wasn’t trying to hurt.”
Sounds like a smart choice. But how’d you get into that in the first place?
“I did it for two years. I love that kinda stuff. I kinda started it to do it and realized I might try it out. At first I just did it for cross-training, but I enjoyed it. I said I’m getting pretty good here.”
So you do Karate? Kung-fu? You a Shaolin or something? “No. But it definitely made me a better athlete.”
“We joke because we both do yoga and the same instructor works for the Giants and the Red Bulls. She keeps tabs on who’s doing better, so we always laugh about that.”
So off the field, how are you different? One neat and the other sloppy, like Felix & Oscar?
“We’re both real neat. He’s always been the one who’s more laid back. I’m always buzzing; he’s more even keeled.”
He get to any of your games?
“He came out during the bye week. He came out to see us play.”
(The Giants had a bye Sept. 28, and the Red Bulls lost 5-4 at home to Colorado Sept. 27. But Terry started the reserve game on Sept. 28 and played the first half of a 3-0 rout of Chicago’s reserves).
You get to any Giant games?
“I made it to every (Giants) game this year and even on the playoff run last year, so definitely watching him play is one of my favorite things to do.”