Chase Hilgenbrinck has retired from professional soccer to become a priest.
(From the Revs press release) "After years of discernment, I feel strongly that the Lord has called me to become a priest in the Catholic Church," Hilgenbrinck said. "Playing professional soccer has been my passion for a long time and I feel blessed to have successfully lived out this dream. My passion now is to do the will of God, which is wanting only what He wants for me. Though I will miss the game of soccer, I know that I am moving on to something much greater."
The defender played in Chile at one point, but he wasn't getting much time with the Revs this season. The team has now moved Kheli Dube to the senior roster.
Some will see this as another example of the low salaries of MLS squeezing out players, but perhaps Chase felt, like Ty Harden, who went to work for Goodwill when he retired young from soccer, that he was needed elsewhere.
5 comments:
Andrea:
A statement that suggested that he'd "make money more as a priest with a stipend than as an MLS player" wouldn't have quite the same ring to it, would it?
Perhaps God wants MLS salaries to remain pitifully low, to encourage such humanitarian career-switching.
I'm sure he'll get to play in that Vatican Soccer Tournament for priests at least.
I'd assume that he'd have to work a lot harder for that stipend than he would riding the bench for the Revs and playing in an occasional Open Cup match. No matter what the Revs were paying him, I don't really think anyone becomes a priest for the money. I could be wrong. I'm not Catholic and don't actually know what they make.
They make a pittance. Room and board is usually covered, and then a stipend maybe equivalent to a grad student [even less than a developmental roster player]...say 15K a year. I don't think many people today enter the priesthood for the high living.
I don't think many people today enter the priesthood for the high living.-
except if they are Jesuits !!!
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