Justin Taillole stared into his head coach’s eyes, trying to process what he heard.
In the room was a round table and a few chairs. To Taillole’s right sat Cal coach Kevin Grimes. Across the table, goalkeeper coach Henry Foulk looked on.
The Cal keeper tried to stay composed, meeting the faces of the two coaches who had once traveled 500 miles to see him play and recruit him.
Three years, and Taillole had yet to play a single collegiate game, record a single save or make any impact on the Cal program.
But his shortcoming was no fault of his own. The reason: injury after injury. Career-threatening injuries, mild injuries. Injuries requiring surgeries, injuries requiring patience.
Grimes leaned across the table and told Taillole they understood his path had been difficult. He paused, and then it came: the ultimatum.
“You are healthy now, so you need to find your way back to your top form or your career is going to end soon,” Grimes said.
There was a brief moment of silence as the words sank in.
Taillole had been thinking it, but Grimes put into words the keeper’s worst fears. It was spring 2013. Justin was in his third year of eligibility and at the bottom of the depth chart.
“I was thinking this could be it,” Taillole says.
But that was not the end — far from it. It was a rebirth, a fresh start. For a kid who had been battered by injuries, his time was just about to begin.
In a summer club game in 2009, after committing to Cal, Taillole came out on a breakaway. An attacker dribbled wide, blasting a shot that caught Taillole off guard and forced him into a sudden dive. There was a deafening pop.
Torn ACL, torn meniscus and MCL strain.
A few days later, Taillole went under the knife, and the long road back began.
When Taillole arrived on the Cal campus for his freshman year in 2010, the learning curve was steep: He had to adjust to Division I soccer with a massive knee brace.
One day, he was doing a drill when a shot caught his pinkie. Although it hurt, the trainer did not think much of it, and so Taillole followed suit. The pain failed to subside, however, and Taillole agreed to an X-ray.
Broken pinkie, bone twisted out of place.
Inserted pins could not help reshape the finger, leaving the keeper with a permanently misshapen pinkie. His freshman year went down the drain, and Taillole was forced to cash in on his redshirt.
During his sophomore campaign, Taillole returned to campus almost back to his top form. His ACL was a distant memory, and although his pinkie was still a reminder of his freshman-year injury, he was ready to finally make that jump up the depth chart.
But five minutes into his first-ever appearance in a Cal uniform vs. Cal Poly, the Mustangs played a through ball, forcing Taillole to come off his line. Taillole took one step and heard the sound he hoped would never fill his ears again: a pop.
Although concerned, the keeper was able to play the remaining 30 minutes with only minor discomfort. The next day, Taillole felt unbearable pain. He went to the trainers and awaited the results.
During a pregame meal, the team trainer walked in and tapped Taillole on the shoulder. Taillole was told to follow him upstairs, completely in the dark as to what was happening. The trainer rummaged around a little bit in his office and finally pulled out a massive protective boot.
“I thought, ‘Seriously, again?,” says Taillole.
Right leg, Lisfranc, one of the metatarsal bones displaced from connecting foot bones, career-threatening.
After rehabbing the rare Lisfranc injury, Taillole finished off the spring at the top of the keeper depth chart. He was playing increased minutes in every spring exhibition and, once again, felt like he had put his injury-plagued past behind him.
Going into his junior year, he could almost taste that first collegiate start he had been vying for since the moment he arrived in Berkeley. But during a shooting drill, a ball caught Taillole’s thumb and ripped it backward.
Sprained thumb muscles, three-week recovery.
The injury could not have been timed any worse. Taillole plummeted down the depth chart and found himself right back where he began his Cal career: at the bottom. He did not reappear in his junior season.
Then, in the spring of 2013, Taillole took a ball to the back of the head and then four weeks later a kick to his eye.
Concussion and nine stitches above the eye.
These latest setbacks lacked the severity of the ACL or Lisfranc injuries, but they were the most painful for Taillole. During his recovery, competing keepers such as Kevin Peach saw their stock skyrocket.
Even worse, Taillole had failed to regain his Arizona Gatorade National Player of the Year form. A kid who had been on top of the world had fallen from grace due to his injuries, and they were starting to get the best of him.
“My morale was shot,” Taillole says. “I got down on myself down. I can’t get back in — well, too bad. I was angry, and I got thrown into a downward spiral.”
And then the meeting with Grimes and Foulk happened, and Taillole was at a pivotal crossroads. He had to decide to either call it a career or endure.
“At that moment, it clicked,” Taillole says. “What have I been doing with all my years here? I took a step back and looked and all that had happened to me. That’s when my mental game took over.”
This past summer, the men’s soccer team stayed in Berkeley to train. Every single player put in the work, but Taillole was a man possessed. He was dedicated to proving to his coaches that he belonged on the squad and went above and beyond the call of duty.
His hands were a problem, so he went and worked on his hands. He spent days staring down a tennis ball shooter, hours volleying and catching a ball off a wall at Edwards Stadium.
When the season rolled around, Taillole knew it was now or never. On the night before the season opener against No. 3 Georgetown, he approached Foulk.
“I told him I thought I should be playing, I told him I was ready and I was expecting a call from him that night,” Taillole says.
The next day, Taillole ran out to his net, the whistle blew and the journey to his first collegiate start was finally over. He had not only survived a stretch that could best even the strongest — he had come out and taken life by the reins.
“He had to weather the storm of adversity,” Grimes says. “The ones that do that the best when they come out the other side; the sky’s the limit at that point.”
Now, Taillole is solidly the first-string keeper for the top-ranked Bears. Every day, his confidence grows, and with him on the back line, the Bears are already looking to the postseason and a return to the Elite Eight.
“When things aren’t going great, if you make a good save, you need to congratulate yourself,” Taillole says. “I was not doing that back then. Now that I am older, I see it’s all a mental game.”
Austin Crochetiere covers men’s soccer. Contact him at [email protected].