John Blanchette: Waibel has last laugh

His career in Major League Soccer spans 10 years and includes three championship rings, and if Craig Waibel’s belief in himself is too strong to describe that career as unlikely, he will admit to an unlikely defining moment.

Especially since it came at Hart Field on Spokane’s South Hill when he was still in high school.

He was a senior at Lewis and Clark and the Ferris game rolled around – and his coach, Ardi Khoei, benched him with the explanation that “every once in a while, a player believes he knows more than the coach.”

“I didn’t think that was me,” Waibel laughed, “but I guess every 17-year-old thinks he knows more than the guy coaching him.”

Waibel has tacked on another 17 years of perspective since then, and today his Houston Dynamo team meets the Seattle Sounders in the second half of the nonsensical two-part MLS opening playoff round. Win and the Dynamo is a game away from a third MLS Cup in four years. Lose and they’re done, and Waibel allows the same might be true of his playing career, though his intent is to play at least one more season.

But if it’s an even 10, that’s 10 more than he could see from that bench at Hart Field.

“Sometime later, (Khoei) grabbed me and said, ‘What are your goals? Do you want to play in college?’ ” Waibel recalled. “And then he told me I wasn’t fast enough and not competitive enough. It lit such a fire in me. I’d never been that upset in my life. I’d never had anyone look me in the eye and tell me I wasn’t good enough. It really shaped me as an athlete. I’d only played the game for fun to that point. It made me compete.

“Of course, he may have been telling me I wasn’t good enough because he really thought I wasn’t.”

If so, it was a miscalculation. From his Spokane days on the Falcons club team, LC and the old Shadow to four years at the University of Washington to his pro apprenticeship with the old A-League Sounders and finally the MLS, Waibel has carved out a niche as a won’t-back-down defender – an identity reinforced this summer when he and the Sounders’ Freddie Ljungberg had a brief entanglement at Qwest Field. They didn’t forget in Seattle – when the two teams played last week, Waibel was booed and heckled relentlessly even without getting into the game.

But Waibel has been just as much a fan favorite in the cities he’s played in as any Sounder in ga-ga Seattle. Some of that is playing style, some is humanitarian work off the field, some is being a good-humored spokesman for a game that can always use some PR.

And maybe they just sense a survivor – a college player who didn’t crack the lineup until his junior year, a scuffler who played barely 300 minutes his first two seasons in the MLS.

“Not every athlete gets told ‘no’ as many times as I did along the way,” he said. “Most of the guys who have made it to the level I have and had this kind of longevity and success were always the best and were rewarded through every level of competition. I’ve been cut and benched and everything else you can imagine – at every level.”

Including this year.

The Dynamo – MLS Cup winners in 2006 and 2007 – is a dynasty in transition, particularly on the backline. Veteran defenders like Eddie Robinson, Wade Barrett and Waibel have seen some of their minutes go to rookies Andrew Hainault and Mike Chabala, and second-year man Geoff Cameron is a candidate for MLS defender of the year. Efficiency hasn’t suffered. The Dynamo surrendered a league-low 29 goals this season and tied for the league’s second-best record.

“I don’t play as much – to put it politely, I’ve gotten a little long in the tooth,” Waibel said. “I’d only be lying to myself if I didn’t say things were changing. Those are three new faces playing with a lot of years to play. It’s humbling as you get a little older in this job, but there’s been plenty of success to go around and it’s fun and a great reward to see guys who played as our backups move up and play and get the job done. There’s no better compliment in sports, in my opinion.”

There’s another tradeoff. After feeling like “a train wreck” at the end of last season, Waibel’s reduced playing time this year makes him feel like he has more left in the tank. His preference would be to stay with Houston – but he’s candid about his second choice.

“I would love to come back to the Northwest,” he said. “I started my career as a Sounder, and I wore that jersey with pride. The head coach now, Sigi Schmid, was the guy who brought me into the MLS (with Los Angeles). Adrian Hanauer, the general manager, was the owner of the Sounders when I played. And (assistant coach) Brian Schmetzer coached the Sounders when I was on loan from the Galaxy. I have ties all through that organization.”

But he’s not in any rush.

After all, he’s already been “walked away” once. When EASports put out its FIFA 2007 video game, they jumped the gun and had Waibel retiring after that season – though he seemed more chagrined that the gamemaker “had kept me the same speed for nine years.”

Who knows? Maybe the guy was eavesdropping at Hart Field, all those years ago.