Jacob Conde is chasing his dream again.
Conde, a 27-year-old graduate of Bloomfield High, achieved a lifelong goal last summer, suiting up for the Puerto Rican national soccer team in an international friendly against Hartford Athletic at Dillon Stadium.
He then earned some more time with the team, as a defender, and even playing with them in front of 14,000 people in Honduras this past fall.
Then he came back to Connecticut and quit his full-time marketing job.
“It’s borderline crazy,” Conde said of quitting his job. He participated in Hartford Athletic’s private combine this week, held at Farmington Sports Arena. “How do you go do that and sit at a desk for nine hours a day?”
Conde, once a digital marketing coordinator, now a substitute teacher and private coach, is one of a handful of professional hopefuls who made it through Hartford Athletic’s open tryouts, held earlier this month, and are now competing for a roster spot at the team’s private combine. The team has 18 players under contract as of now, and may very likely invite some of the tryout players along for preseason training.
Professional soccer has long been Conde’s dream. A graduate of Medaille College in Buffalo, N.Y., Conde has played in England, Spain and Croatia, though Hartford Athletic has been his preferred landing spot since before the team’s inaugural season. He attended open tryouts last season, and didn’t make the cut for Jimmy Nielsen’s squad.
A year later, he’s back hoping to impress first-year head coach Radhi Jaidi enough to stick with the team. After tryouts and the combine, he earned an invite to the preseason training, which begins on Jan. 27.
“I think things kind of just lined up,” Conde said. “I don’t think last year, I was ready mentally and physically, but I feel like I’m a year older now, and I definitely know what to expect and I’m definitely more prepared to take this on with whatever is given to me in my way.”
Conde isn’t the only Connecticut local who impressed enough in open tryouts and the combine to make it through to preseason trailing, though the other is 10 years younger. Alfonso Vazquez, a senior at Windham High School, dazzled coaches and ownership so much in tryouts that chairman and CEO Bruce Mandell has begun calling him Aguerito, a reference to Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero.
Just last October, Vazquez broke the state’s all-time boys soccer goal scoring record. The previous record of 126, held by Joe Nielsen of RHAM, was set in 1988.
The same impressive footwork and speed that helped Vazquez into the state’s history book has helped him inch one step closer to a potential professional career.
“I just wanted to play too regular, not to expect too much,” said Vazquez of the open tryouts. “I think I did pretty well. Not the best that I could do, but pretty well.”
Even going against grown men, most with at least four years of collegiate experience, some with professional reps under their belt, Vazquez found ways to stand out with his speed and footwork.
Vazquez knows that if things fall through with Hartford Athletic, he still has four more years of collegiate eligibility waiting.
“I didn’t expect all of that,” he said of the experience. “I was just paying my game, I didn’t expect too much … They helped my game a lot, we’re moving the ball a lot quicker.”
Fairfield native John Austin-Ricks, a former captain at Syracuse; Aitor Elena, Gael Kisombe, and Andre Morrision, University of Hartford alums; Ryan Matteo and Gael Yuste, both Yale alums, also tried out, and advanced to the private combine.
The season kicks off on March 13, at New York Red Bulls II.
Shawn McFarland can be reached at smcfarland@courant.com.
