Photo: Kin Man Hui /San Antonio Express-News Photo: Kin Man Hui /San Antonio Express-News Photo: Darren Abate / USL Photo: Courtesy Photo Photo: Courtesy Photo

With seconds left in San Antonio FC’s final regular-season match and a 3-1 win secured, defender Greg Cochrane was tackled by a Rio Grande Valley attacker.

“I fell down with my leg under me,” he said. “For a few seconds, I wasn’t sure if I was injured or not.”

An injury would have been an ice-bucket challenge of irony in its purest, most unforgiving form. It would have been a mockery and an abomination.

Athletes get injured. It happens every day in every sport. It happens in games, practices, even when they’re working out or goofing around.

Except, of course, the 26-year-old Cochrane, who — with apologies to Tim Duncan, David Robinson, George Gervin and Manu Ginobili — might be the closest thing to a superhero ever seen in San Antonio.

He wasn’t injured in the collision last weekend.

And at the risk of jinxing Cochrane, the guy never gets injured. He rarely misses games.

SAFC coach Darren Powell put Cochrane into the starting lineup for the club’s inaugural match against Seattle Sounders 2 on April 3, 2016.

Since then, Cochrane has played in almost 96 percent of all minutes in the club’s two-year-history.

Not only has Cochrane started 61 of 62 SAFC regular-season matches, but he’s played in four of the team’s five U.S. Open Cup tournament games.

He’s the only SAFC player to notch 30 matches in each season.

Cochrane has played 5,413 minutes in two years. The closest SAFC player in terms of minutes played is fellow defender/man-mountain Stephen McCarthy, with 3,713.

The distinction is that McCarthy, at 6-foot-5 and 192 pounds, dishes out pain when contact is made. Cochrane, on the other hand, is 5-8, 141 and more easily folded.

“I’ve always prided myself on my fitness,” he said. “The best advice I’ve ever gotten was ‘The best ability is availability.’”

Cochrane spends a lot of time and energy on rest and recovery between matches. That helps him avoid some injuries and keeps him fresh during a match.

He endures bumps, bruises and scratches, but plays through them.

Beyond a stress fracture in his back as a high school player in Council Rock, Pennsylvania, he’s also avoided major injuries. He attributes that to good genes and better luck.

In four years — split evenly between Virginia Tech and then Louisville — Cochrane started all but three games.

The only gap in his streak of staying on the field came during two years spent on the rosters for MLS clubs Los Angeles and Chicago, where he was part of the rotations.

Cochrane serves as a solid metaphor for SAFC, a team that lacks the flash of MLS squads but compensates with smart, aggressive play. San Antonio FC faces Tulsa in the first round of the USL playoffs Saturday.

Cochrane is known as an iron man out on the pitch, but he’s the iron man. He’s not the toughest athlete in his own house.

That honor would go to Emile Hunter, engaged to marry Cochrane early next year and a total bad ass in her own right.

Hunter, 26, met Cochrane during freshman orientation at Virginia Tech and they have been together ever since.

While Cochrane takes a few tackles here and there and runs around the field, Hunter runs marathons and recently completed an Ironman Triathlon.

Hunter was an All-American lacrosse player at Sycamore High School in suburban Cincinnati. After two state titles, she went to college on a athletic scholarship, but quit after her junior year to focus on grades.

She took up running after that because she didn’t want “to get squishy.”

Cochrane and Hunter turn everything in their daily lives into playful competition — chores, games, workouts, etc.

“We’re super-competitive about everything,” she said.

“She’s nonstop,” Cochrane said. “She’s crazy. She keeps me on my toes.”

Hunter’s competitiveness came from trying to challenge her older brother, James Hunter. She took up lacrosse at 11 to compete with James when he began playing in high school.

“He did not take it easy on me,” she said. “He put me in the goal and just ripped shots at me.”

Hunter trained for a year to take on the Ironman, which took her 12 hours and 56 minutes to complete.

“It beat my brother’s time,” she said, laughing, “which was a huge moment. I was super-pumped about that.”

Hunter trains to get good. Cochrane, on the other hand, is a gifted athlete who does well in most sports. He offered to go through an Ironman workout with her. First up was the swimming pool.

Cochrane, a world-class soccer player, did not do well.

“He’s not a gifted swimmer,” Hunter said, laughing. “This may the only sport I can beat him at.”

She then slowed her speech to emphasize the next three words.

“Which … is … awesome.”

rbragg@express-news.net

Twitter: @roybragg