When Scott Vallow met Craig Demmin in 2000, Vallow was 22 and a second-year goalkeeper new to the Rhinos. Demmin was 28 and coming off earning a second straight team MVP award while helping lead the Rochester to a second consecutive championship.
“I called him, ‘Sir,’ ” Vallow says. “Even to this day whenever I see him I call him ‘Sir.’ I’ve never met anyone like Craig before. He’s a true professional. I just have a tremendous amount of respect for the way he carried himself on and off the field.”
Try finding anyone around town who doesn’t feel the same way about the former defender from Trinidad & Tobago. Demmin, the only four-time MVP in Rhinos’ history (seven seasons), will be inducted into their Hall of Fame with former forward Doug Miller and goalkeeper Pat Onstad at Saturday night’s match.
They join Lenin Steenkamp, last year’s inaugural inductee. The first 1,000 fans receive Demmin bobble heads. Miller (July 27) and Onstad (Aug. 11) will have the same honor soon. Miller, 43, is the Rhinos’ leading scorer with 75 regular-season and 22 game-winning goals. He was part of the 1998 and ’99 championship teams with Onstad, 44, and Demmin, 41. A two-time MVP, Miller played seven seasons with Rochester and was 1997 A-League MVP.
Onstad, who coaches for D.C. United (MLS), played three full seasons and part of the 2001 campaign here before moving on to win MLS Cup titles in San Jose (2003) and Houston (2006-07). He’s a two-time MLS Goalkeeper of the Year. But Demmin is considered by many to be the best player in the Rhinos’ 17-year history. At 6-foot-2, he had the rare combination of being powerfully built yet still fleet of foot. With a non-stop work ethic, he’s still in great shape.
“Even if he did make a mistake he was able to recover because of his speed,” says former Rochester coach Pat Ercoli, now the club’s president.
“I feel fortunate to have been able to play with him,” says Scott Schweitzer, the center back who with Demmin formed one of the best defensive tandems in A-League/USL history. “When I think of classy athletes in any sport, he comes to mind.”
Demmin lives in Chili with his wife, Sarah, and their sons, Drew, 3, and Jack, 1. Rochester has been home base since he came back from his one season in Major League Soccer with Tampa Bay (2001). He retired in 2006. He was an assistant last year for the indoor Rochester Lancers and has been active, part-time and volunteer coach or consultant with local colleges and high schools and also runs Craig Demmin’s Elite Academy (www.craigdemminsoccer.com) that specializes in small group workouts.
His keeps his camps, just like his persona, low key.
“It wasn’t just me,” Demmin says of those Rhinos title teams. “You had guys who were special in different ways but somehow complemented each other and underlying it all — everybody wanted to win.”
Schweitzer, a six-time all-league pick, and five-time selection Demmin each say they were an imperfect-but-perfect match. Talented yet humble, Demmin was a quiet leader. He doesn’t drink or smoke, eats healthy and never mouthed off on the field. A gentle giant, he’d knocked you over while winning a header then help you up.
“The way we played were complete opposites,” Schweitzer says. “I was flamboyant and crazy and he was reserved, relaxed and respectful. He was big and strong in the air and I was more of a defender who attacked.”
Demmin missed all but one match of the 2005 season with a knee injury, and that caused friction with management. Thinking the Rhinos, then coached by Laurie Calloway, no longer believed in him, he left to play in 2006 for Virginia Beach. “I understand that with any team you have to make changes. Maybe that was my time,” he says, shaking his head.
But he didn’t agree with the way it was done, especially for a player who has “shown you only honesty and work ethic,” Demmin says.
Ercoli, who wasn’t part of the Rhinos from 2006-09, admits “with somebody of his stature in the community and with what he’d accomplished with the team, I think it probably wasn’t handled properly.”
Demmin has always liked Rochester’s small-city feel. That’s his comfort zone and nature coming from a small, simple town in Trinidad, and then Jackson, Miss.. He helped Belhaven College there win a 1992 NAIA title by beating a Lynn (Fla.) University team that included Steenkamp. When the Rhinos used to win so much, the players felt like the city’s stars.
“Fans were genuine and everywhere you go — the post man, a guy at a restaurant, your pizza (delivery) guy — they knew the Rhinos, and it made you feel important,” Demmin says. “All those people came out to support you and you felt you had to reciprocate on the field.”