Howdy! Me again! Earlier in the week, I wrote a Mr. Numbers Nerd Notebook looking at some of the statistical feats resulting from Crew SC’s 2-1 victory over the New York Red Bulls. With Kei Kamara assisting on each of Ethan Finlay’s two goals, the two of them entered some impressive territory on the season. Also, you can read about Steve Clark’s rare accomplishment…on offense.

And with that, here are some more notes collected during a surprisingly emotional night at MAPFRE Stadium.

CAN KEI CATCH UP?

After his two assists to Finlay, Kamara revealed his secret plan.

“I’m catching up to Ethan in assists,” he said. “That’s what I’m telling him. I think I’ve got like five or six [he has five], so he better watch out. I’m going to catch up to him.”

After directly benefitting from those two assists, Finlay is all in favor of Kei’s new quest.

“Hey, that’s great,” Finlay said. “If he’s chasing me down and he’s getting close to me, that means somebody’s on the end of it. If I’m fortunate to get a couple, I’d be happy with that. But hey, that would be tremendous if he gets up to double digits in assists.”

THE RETURN OF THE ‘CHISE

Crew SC fans are no stranger to the danger of concussions. Midfielder Ross Paule, a crucial member of the 2004 Supporters’ Shield winning team, had his career cut short by the debilitating aftereffects of multiple concussions. And for several straight years, fans of the Black & Gold held their breath every time star defender Chad Marshall went to the ground, seeing as concussions nearly derailed his career before it truly blossomed.

And now there is Wil Trapp, the mega-talented local kid done good, the friendly face of Crew SC, “The ‘Chise.” After being listed as questionable with concussion symptoms for nearly three months, Trapp made his first appearance at MAPFRE Stadium since March 14. The crowd let him know he had been missed. Equal parts “we were worried” and “welcome back,” Trapp received a heartfelt ovation upon entering the game in the 88th minute.

“It’s special,” Crew SC Sporting Director and Head Coach Gregg Berhalter said of that moment. “He means a lot to this area and rightfully so. He’s a guy that most, if not all, of Columbus is proud of.”

After playing two official minutes (and six actual minutes due to stoppage time), Trapp was all hugs and smiles as he came off the field. A little while later, he was still aglow when talking about the support he received from the crowd.

“Sirk, that was incredible, man,” he said when we talked about the ovation. “You’re sitting there and trying not to smile and trying not to get goosebumps, but at the end of the day, I’m just happy I’m back on the field. But most importantly, I’m happy that we had such a comeback great performance tonight. Ethan Finlay had a great performance, but you could say that about the rest of the starting eleven. But yeah, it was just great. It was just great to be back on the field. That’s all I can say.”

He was so excited to be back on the field that when he suffered a foul in the New York end that more or less sealed the game late in stoppage time, Trapp popped to his feet and waved his arms to fire up the crowd. It was a move that’s more Frankie-ish than Trapp-ian.

“Yeah, why not?” he said with a laugh. “Excitement. It was all your emotions in one. I’m just happy to be back.”

While the ovation from the fans was the public ceremony that capped his comeback, Trapp had plenty of private support that made his return to the field possible.

“It was a long time,” Trapp said. “I’ve never been out that long, but I’ve been surrounded by great staff here, the coaching staff, teammates, girlfriend, family, team doctors – everyone’s been huge in helping me get back, helping me stay positive. It’s never fun when you’re watching from the sidelines, but you just keep that goal in the back of your mind and push toward that every day.”

Now that the day has come, with a 16-minute Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup appearance last Tuesday in Orlando and his late-game return to League action in front of the home fans, everyone in the Crew SC family is looking forward to Trapp making continued progress as he returns from his lengthy and scary absence.

“I think he has a bright future ahead of him,” Berhalter said. “It’s our job to keep working with him and keep progressing and getting him to where he needs to be.”

“I feel great,” Trapp added. “We’ll just go from there.”

ETHAN’S GOT HIS OWN BACK (OR SOMETHING)

Early in the game, Finlay was part of a bizarre play. A ball got played directly at him on a line as he started to make a run. He hunched down and the ball rolled along his back and then fell in front of him. It looked like a fancy trick, as if he played for Harlem Globetrotters SC or something.

“Yeah, I was actually just trying to figure out…I was just trying to duck,” Finlay revealed, instead of trying to claim credit for the fancy move. “I was trying to get it past me, but it ended up sitting on my back there for a second. It was a strange play. I haven’t seen it on video. I will have to go back and look at it. It was a little unfortunate because I think if it would have come through clean, I would have been in.”

Yeah, well it still looked pretty cool.

“Maybe it will be on plays of the night,” he said. “Who knows?”

I do. It turns out that Finlay had two other highlights that took precedence on Saturday night’s highlight reel.

MEET THE MINI NORDECKE

Crew SC’s academy has taken local youngsters like Matt Lampson, Chad Barson and Wil Trapp, and helped nurture them from Crew SC fans into Crew SC players. Perhaps the same academy model will work for nurturing younger fans into future Nordecke members. It may take years to see how it all shakes out, but on Saturday night, Frankie Hejduk and a small army of small supporters took the first step with the impromptu creation of the Mini Nordecke.

At the start of the second half, Hejduk and 30 or so kids took up residence in Section 135, with only the chasm of the stage separating them from the first-team Nordecke. They sang. They chanted. They cheered. They just did it without beer and without worrying about stray bursts of adult language.

Many parents may view the Nordecke as a scene for teenagers and up, but that doesn’t mean that younger kids lack the desire to participate in creating atmosphere. Hejduk heard the laments of these children, so the Mini Nordecke was born.

“A bunch of kids wanted to start singing and chanting and dancing, much like the Nordecke,” Hejduk explained. “They weren’t able to sit over there, so I decided, hey, let’s start a little section right next to the Nordecke where we will kind of almost initiate them into the next Nordecke. We started off today with about 30 kids, and these kids brought it like no other.”

The kids participated in the singing and chanting of many Nordecke staples, plus they did some stuff on their own when the Nordecke wasn’t chanting. Leading them through it all was a Crew SC and U.S. Men’s National Team legend who is now the godfather of the Mini Nordecke.

“The Chantfather, they are calling me,” Hejduk said. “They’re asking me to lead them. I’m honored to. I will accept that challenge. I can’t wait to lead this Mini Nordecke into the next Nordecke. I think we have a lot of future prospects here. I’ve seen some of these kids with some very loud lungs, and they already know the chants.”

I spoke to a bright, enthusiastic member of the Mini Nordecke, who, truth be told, was already more mature than Frankie. When I asked him what it was like to be more mature than the adult in the group, all he could do was laugh without offering a counterargument, so for the purposes of this article, I will refer to him as Kid Who Is More Mature Than Frankie (KWIMMTF).

“It was great,” KWIMMTF said. “It’s going to be something for the future. There were around 30 or 40 of us. It was the first time, so it’s not going to be that much. We’re working on it. Our goal by the end of the season is a thousand people.”

A fellow Mini Nordecke member, a young girl, opened her eyes wide and said, “That’s so many people!”

Frankie thinks it can happen.

“We’ve already got some roots starting here, and I feel like this is going to grow,” Hejduk said. “This could grow into the thousands. That’s my vision. There are a lot of kids in Columbus, I know that.”

The kids appreciate the enthusiasm and support from their Chantfather.

“He’s our ringleader,” KWIMMTF said. “He starts all of the chants and we kind of go through him for everything. It’s just going to be cool.”

KWIMMTF said that “Columbus ‘Til I Die” is definitely his favorite existing Nordecke song, but he didn’t rule out the Mini Nordecke creating their own unique songs and chants to complement the existing Nordecke repertoire.

“I think that’s going to happen,” KWIMMTF said. “It’s going to organically happen. We’re going to spend long hours in the garage and work on it. So yeah, we’ll see.”

The kids asked that I get the word out about their Instagram account, which is @mininordecke. They are also looking for new members to come join them. It’s very informal and is intended for kids 14 and under. For now, the Mini Nordecke is only for the second half. The kids spend the first half with their families, but they congregate in Section 135 at halftime so that they can support the team together for the final 45 minutes. Other than that, just keep it clean and have fun singing and chanting in support of the Black & Gold.

When asked for his best sales pitch to the kids of Columbus, KWIMMTF said, “Come find us and have fun in the Mini Nordecke!” Then, just to show they meant business, about 10 Mini Nordecke members, led by their Chantfather, showed me their chops by letting loose with this familiar number:

We love you! We love you! We love you!

And where you go we’ll follow! We’ll follow! We’ll follow!

Because we support Columbus! Columbus! Columbus!

And that’s the way we like it! We like it! We like it!

Whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa!

Whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa!

Amazing. An unofficial supporters section for kids is yet another first for the Team of Firsts. And it’s just the beginning.

“Based on how they sang today in their first Mini Nordecke section,” Hejduk said, “I feel like this is going to be something that Columbus isn’t ready for.”

WELCOME BACK, STU

One of my postgame rituals is to visit Founder’s Park at the front of the main plaza at MAPFRE Stadium. Long after the event-driven excitement and the clamor of the crowd have subsided, I spend a few serene moments in the stadium’s spiritual epicenter. I visit the Lamar Hunt statue as it looks over everything that Lamar made possible in the first place. I visit the memorial rock for former Crew SC coach Tom Fitzgerald, who was a friendly ambassador for the club in those vital early years. And I visit the memorial rock for Kirk Urso, whose wit, wisdom, compassion and determination filled an entire book of funny and inspiring stories. At the end of the night, I like to visit these three good men who are no longer with us in body, but remain with us in spirit.

This visit usually lasts just a couple minutes, but on the evening of June 28, 2014, I stayed with Lamar, Fitz and Kirk for probably an hour. That night’s game had been postponed due to a tragic lightning strike. At the time, the only thing I knew was that a fan had been struck in the parking lot and had been taken to the hospital. I wanted to go home, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know what I was waiting for, but I decided I was going to wait with Lamar, Fitz and Kirk.

Obsessively refreshing Twitter for updates on the fan’s condition, I finally learned a name. Lt. Stu Tudor of the Columbus Fire Department was the man who had been struck by lightning. An abstract tragedy had become concrete. I wept.

At some point—well, apparently at 10:43 p.m. to be exact—I tweeted the following:

I hope there's soon a night when Stu Tudor can step on the #Crew96 field and feel the love from everyone who is pulling for him right now. — Steve Sirk (@stevesirk) June 29, 2014

This past Saturday night was a partial wish fulfilment.

As unpredictable as a lightning strike can be, so is the recovery from one. Some victims perish, although lightning has an amazingly low 10% fatality rate, despite millions of volts, tens of thousands of amps, and temperatures up to five times hotter than the surface of the sun. On the flipside, some victims shake it off as if nothing at all had happened. For instance, with two outs in the top of the 9th inning on August 12, 1919, Cleveland Indians pitcher Ray Caldwell was struck by lightning on the pitcher’s mound at League Park. Horror and bedlam reigned in the stands and on the field, but the dazed Caldwell sat up, collected himself, and demanded the ball from shortstop Ray Chapman. After a brief delay, Caldwell returned to the mound and retired the final batter of the game. None the worse for wear, he won 20 games the next season as the Indians claimed their first World Series title.

In between those two extremes lie all manner of full and partial recoveries. Every now and then, you will hear about an unexplainable gift bestowed by the bolt, like the case of Dr. Tony Cicoria, who was struck by lightning in 1994 and within months became obsessed with piano music. He started playing and composing piano music as if he had done it his whole life, despite never having any musical inclination in the 42 years prior to being struck. More often than not, however, the truth is frustrating and mundane. Many victims have no physical ailments, but their personality has been altered forever. Others lead mostly normal lives but still have inexplicable physical issues.

And some, well, their recovery is considerably prolonged. What is suddenly taken in a furious flash is recovered at a snail’s pace in the million-meter dash. The electrical circuitry of their body becomes so messed up that they have to re-learn the use of physical motion. Even then, the recovery is unpredictable. Everything appears to be okay, medically speaking, except the body just doesn’t work. It’s a mystery.

Lt. Stu Tudor has been fighting that fight for over a year now. He has made progress through innumerable hard-won victories—from the first wiggling of a finger to the utterance of the first spoken word. When they showed him on the scoreboard before the game, sitting in front of a circle-15 Kirk Urso banner no less, I teared up and thought back to last June, sitting with Lamar, Fitz and Kirk, desperately hoping that Lt. Stu Tudor would get to walk onto the field and hear the cheers of those who were pulling for him on that tragic night. He may not have been able to walk out onto the field at this time, but I hope that the loving ovation from the crowd lifted his spirits in some way. Lt. Tudor has already overcome more than most of us ever will in our lifetimes. He deserved that hero’s welcome.

To learn more about Lt. Tudor’s recovery and to make a donation, please visit the GoFundMe site set up for that purpose.

When asked about Tudor’s in-stadium appearance, Gregg Berhalter said, “I have not had contact with him recently, but what I would say is he’s one of us. Obviously a tragic accident, an unfortunate accident happened last year, but he didn’t leave our minds and we were thinking about him the whole time. It’s great to see him here and that’s a special moment.”

Once his media duties were done, Berhalter did indeed spend time with Lt. Tudor, even presenting him with Federico Higuain’s jersey. If Lt. Tudor took anything away from his return to MAPFRE Stadium, I hope it’s that he knows that this community cares about him. When progress is measured in discouragingly tiny increments, I’d imagine that every bit of encouragement helps. By all accounts, he’s got an amazingly supportive girlfriend and family. His fellow firefighters have also gone the extra mile to help him in his time of need. And on Saturday night, I hope he felt the love from the Black & Gold community as well.

He’s one of us.

Questions? Comments? Want me to remind you that Lt. Tudor’s GoFundMe page is located at http://www.gofundme.com/Lt-Stu-Tudor? Feel free to write at sirk65@yahoo.com or via twitter @stevesirk

Steve Sirk’s latest book, “Kirk Urso: Forever Massive”, is available at the Crew SC Shop or by ordering online HERE. All proceeds go to the Kirk Urso Memorial Fund for congenital heart defect research.