Irwin Grabbing His Opportunity

If you aren’t from Charlotte, NC, or a follower of Elon University soccer, you might not know who Clint Irwin is.
He grew up playing club soccer for Charlotte United, and was a standout high school goalkeeper at Charlotte Christian. He played two seasons of summer soccer with the Carolina Dynamo during his four years with the Elon Phoenix. Still don’t know who he is?
Well, he’s the starting goalkeeper for the Colorado Rapids!
It hasn’t been so long ago that he was the backup goalkeeper for the USL PRO Charlotte Eagles.
He had expected to backup Rapids starter Matt Pickens, but that all changed when the Colorado veteran suffered a broken forearm in the seventh minute against Real Salt Lake in the third game of the season.
[show_disconnected][show_to accesslevel=’Subscriber’] Irwin came on and made his MLS debut with a solid 83-minute effort, and included key one-on-one saves on RSL midfielder Luis Gil. The game ended in a 1-1 tie.
“Those are the kinds of plays you just see lining up, and you stay back on your line you’re not going to have much of a chance,” Irwin said. “I just went out like a crazy man and tried to make myself as big as possible. Luckily it hit me in the shoulder and not the face so I could still get some good pictures.”
Irwin looked back at the opportunity that came his way, never wanting it to come because of a serious injury to a teammate. Nevertheless, he seized the opportunity and has made the best of his chances.
“You always know there’s a chance you can get into a game, but I’ve been battling just to make the bench,” said Irwin, who made three saves in his first game. “It was little surreal because I went out for warmups with Matt, and coaches took me right in front of the RSL supporters there at that end of the field, and they were giving me stick.
“And if you’re coming from a small school and USL, you don’t hear that kind of stuff. That was a good wakeup call for me that I was in the big leagues now.”
Pickens is likely to be out of action for another month, at least, and Irwin continues in the goal. He is 2-1-2 in his first five games and has allowed only four goals in those five games. Two were by penalty kicks.
The highlight of Irwin’s short rookie experience was his 1-0 shutout win at home over Real Salt Lake in which he saved an early penalty kick off the foot of Alvaro Saborio, who had made all 12 of his previous dozen penalty kicks.
Irwin gave credit to his goalkeeper coach, Chris Sharpe, for the scouting report on opposing penalty takers.
“I had a pretty good idea of what Saborio was going to do and how he takes his penalties,” said Irwin after the shutout.
That save earned Irwin the MLS Save of the Week award, becoming the first Rapids player to earn top MLS Save since the weekly honor started in 2011.
Irwin doesn’t know what the future holds, but for now he’s “The Man.” He has no promises from the coaches, nor does he expect any. Right now he settles for the compliments he got after that first game when he replaced Pickens in the goal.
“Good teams are built on the competition for spots,” he said as he looked back at that first game. “The coaches didn’t really tell me anything about the future, they just told me I had a good game.”