Cavalry FC's Ben Fisk back in form, putting passes in perfect position

Midfielder returns from sciatica to be igniter for Calgary's CPL club

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Ben Fisk is back at it …

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And feeling good about his game.

That’s big for Cavalry FC.

With his passes to create scoring threats and vision to find teammates crossing into the enemy box, a healthy Fisk is giving Calgary’s professional footie club a significant boost from the midfield, especially on the attacking end of the field.

“Vision would be one of my strengths and something I’ve always prided myself on,” said Fisk, who has been back in Cavalry’s lineup for two months following a lengthy battle with sciatica.

“I’m not the most gifted player physically, but technically and mentally, I think that’s where I stand out,” Fisk continued. ”So I’m always trying to use those attributes to my advantage to find a pocket of space that someone else on the field might not see or find a passing lane that someone else might not see and then use technique to pull off the pass that I see.”

The Cavs are glad to have Fisk’s vision back in the race for first place of the Canadian Premier League.

Particularly against the other top teams in the circuit, including nemesis Forge FC (8W-5D-5L), who visit Spruce Meadows on Friday night to play Cavalry (7-6-4) at ATCO Field (7 p.m., OneSoccer, OneSoccer.ca).

“It’s gearing up to be a pretty exciting finish to the season, so I’m just grateful to be healthy and out there,” Fisk said. “I think I’m in a really good rhythm now where I’m feeling like me again. The thing that makes me the happiest in the world is just being out there and feeling like myself and feeling like I can help the team and in the ways that I’ve done now in my 11-, 12-year career.”

That career has been impressive.

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The native of Vancouver grew up in the hometown Whitecaps system before stops in the U.S. and Spain. Fisk then became a member of FC Edmonton for the final two seasons of its North American Soccer League existence, and enjoyed two games with Canada’s national team in 2017. After that, he played part of one season for Derry City F.C. in Northern Ireland.

But with the CPL’s rise came a chance to return home, with Fisk having appeared in 90 games to date — first with Pacific FC, then with Atlético Ottawa and now with Cavalry, with whom he’s now got 59 games under his belt.

That count would be higher if not for the bout with sciatica — injury or pressure on the sciatic nerve, which causes pain, weakness, numbness or tingling in the leg — that sidelined him for the first few months of this season.

“I don’t know exactly how it started,” Fisk said of the lengthiest injury of his soccer life. “But I essentially had the nerves pinch pretty bad in my piriformis (muscle) and kept playing with it and grinding away at it and making it worse and worse. And then in pre-season during a game down in Seattle, my leg went completely dead mid-game.

“So it was a little scary, having not experienced any sort of nerve issues before. Then, it was a pretty long road to recovery — muscles weren’t firing, and I didn’t have any feeling in my foot and calf. So it was a really slow grind to try and get back. But luckily, we’ve got a really good medical team here and they took good care of me.

“It’s very hard to even measure what sort of damage there is to the nerve,” Fisk continued. “So that kind of made it even harder. If you blow your knee out and you have an operation, you have a pretty clear timeline of ‘OK, Weeks 1-4, I can do this. Weeks 4-8, I can do that.’ I didn’t have that luxury. It was kind of come in every single day and, ‘How’s it feeling? The exact same as it was six weeks ago.’”

These days, he’s back to being the exact same Ben Fisk who was brought in to be a key contributor to the Cavs attack.

He has enjoyed three straight starts, scored on a perfectly executed header in tight and pretty much put every cross and pass into a spot to create golden opportunities.

Fisk ignites the offence, plain and simple.

“Watching players growing up that saw passes that no one else could see — like Zinedine Zidane,” Fisk said. “I’ve always tried to kind of bring that to my game.

“Steve Nash is another one. I know it’s basketball, but he was a big hero of mine growing up — I’m a B.C. boy like him, and I was coached by his brother, (former Cavs assistant) Martin, as well. Steve was kind of my mould of player — in a different sport albeit. Not physically anything special but can make a pass like no other.

“I think maybe something that would make me a little different than other wingers is I never really thought of it as crossing for me. It’s always a pass. So it’s always the right speed of the ball and the right shape of the pass that’s gonna give my teammate the best opportunity to score, where a lot of times crossing is seen as the ball comes to you and your head’s down and you just whip a ball into a box. Obviously, a lot of players have a lot of success doing that, but I’ve always viewed it more trying to put it on a platter for someone else.”

Whatever he’s doing, it’s working, helping Cavalry to become even more dangerous not long after not knowing when — or even if — he’d be back playing.

“It just obviously was a pretty hard time personally and mentally,” Fisk added. “I mean, just having what you love and what you’ve dedicated your whole life to taken away from you and you don’t really even realize all the things you maybe rely on your passion for. When things outside the pitch aren’t going well, this is kind of my safe space, where everything kind of drifts away and you just feel like a little kid on the field again. So the injury combined again with some some personal things, as well, I’m not gonna lie.

“It was pretty damn hard.”

Cavalry’s coming off a 1-0 loss to host Atlético Ottawa (7-3-7) last Saturday, leaving the Calgary side in third place of the CPL. The Cavs have lost just twice in seven games … Meanwhile, Forge topped visiting Vancouver FC (3-4-10) 2-0 last weekend. The Hammers are on a four-game unbeaten run, going 3-1-0 in that span to shoot them into a tie for first place with Pacific (8-5-4) on 29 points, just two ahead of rival Cavalry … The Cavs will be without forward Myer Bevan, as the league’s co-leader in goals (8) sits out the second half of his two-game suspension for an incident two weeks ago in Vancouver … Still sidelined for the Cavs are defender Roberto Alarcón (hamstring) and midfielder Nikolas Myroniuk (broken collarbone).

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