Will Hesmer is the most accomplished goalkeeper in the history of Columbus Crew SC. He leads names like Jon Busch, Steve Clark and Brad Friedel in starts, wins and saves for the club, and he started in goal for the 2008 MLS Cup-winning team.
But even Hesmer admits that perhaps his most recognizable claim to fame came in stoppage time against rivals Toronto FC in 2010, when he became just the second goalkeeper in MLS history to score in the regular season, converting at the same venue, BMO Field, where Columbus and Toronto will meet Saturday (5pm ET, MLS LIVE in US, SN360 in Canada). In addition to Hesmer and Danny Cepero in the regular season, Tally Hall in the CONCACAF Champions League and David Bingham in a friendly have scored goals from the run of play as MLS goalkeepers.
Back in 2010, with Columbus trailing 2-1 and setting up a corner kick in the closing minutes, Hesmer thought he should certainly run upfield to add to the Crew's aerial options. But when he looked to the bench, he was almost stopped.
“I remember looking over to the bench and standing there asking if I should go up,” he said. “(Head Coach) Robert Warzycha was emphatically saying no, but [assistant coach] Ricky Iribarren was saying, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ That’s all I needed, so I went.”
The corner kick came in and found the head of Chad Marshall, who nodded it down directly into the path of Hesmer. The goalkeeper controlled it with his thigh just outside the six-yard box and expected to be in a hurry to get a shot off.
“Truthfully, after I trapped it, I thought I wasn’t going to let it hit the ground,” he said. “I thought I was just going to hit it off the thigh out of the air and kick it. But I realized I had tons of time to let it settle, and then I saw Dan Gargan running at me.”
Hesmer hesitated and then swung his foot, smashing the shot through the outstretched legs of Gargan and directly into the Toronto net.
“Truthfully, I think it just had eyes,” he said. “It went through however many people, but I couldn’t believe it went in.”
Years later, the part of the play that Crew SC fans remember most may be Hesmer’s celebration. He wheeled around and jogged all over the field, seemingly confused about how to celebrate the goal.
“I was just laughing, and I was looking to [Brian Carroll] and I think my exact words were, ‘Is this a [expletive] joke? Did that really just happen?’” he said with a laugh. “I just couldn’t believe it really happened.”
But Hesmer said his confusion came from his coaches.
“I knew exactly how I wanted to go celebrate,” he said. “I was just laughing and running and I was just going straight to the bench to bring everybody together. As I was running to the bench, both (coaches) were saying, ‘No! No! Go away. Go to their corner.’ So I made a beeline back to their corner flag.”
It wasn’t until later that he realized that even in their moment of jubilation, Warzycha and Iribarren were still being pragmatic.
“I was like, ‘I was coming to celebrate with you guys. Why didn’t you want to celebrate?’” Hesmer said. “They said, ‘Guys were tired. You just tied it. We were wasting time.’”
Hesmer was always confident in his abilities in the field. An all-state midfielder in high school, the goalkeeper missed scoring. He says he once made a bet about how his goalscoring abilities compared with teammate Danny O’Rourke, who played 16,713 MLS minutes without a single goal.
“Danny was like, ‘I’ll score eventually,’” Hesmer said. “I was like, ‘Danny, I promise you that I’ll score a goal before you. There is no chance you score a goal. There’s a greater likelihood that I score a goal than you score a goal.’”
Hesmer won his “non-monetary” bet, but he didn’t want to share what the stakes were.
“[O’Rourke] still has yet to pay up,” he said with a laugh.
