THE FRONT ROW WITH BRUCE BOURQUIN: Friday, Sept. 23, 2016

It all began with a family visit for one month in 2004 to the mountainous city of Heredia, Costa Rica.

Gabe Lawson had just finished his first school year teaching a computer class and coaching varsity boys soccer at Post Falls High. Along with Estella, his wife at the time, Lawson stayed at the home of Roberto Esquivel Jr. and his wife at the time, Seidy. The Esquivels owned a farm that was more of a retreat and a bakery in the city of nearly 124,000, located 7 miles north of the capital of San José.

It was there when he met Diego Esquivel, who was only 3 at the time, his older brother Roberto, who was 5, plus their sister, Montse. Lawson met Estella in 2001 in his former home of Pleasanton, Calif., married in 2002, and they got divorced in 2010.

Lawson currently teaches Spanish classes and still coaches Trojans boys soccer. He also coached boys soccer for a few seasons at Emerald Valley High in Pleasanton. He has 14-year-old twins who are freshmen at Post Falls, one of whom, Ethan, is also on the varsity squad. Seidy runs a local housekeeping business in Post Falls.

These days, Diego is a junior forward on the soccer team at Post Falls High, where he is the team leader in goals and assists, and is coached by his uncle, Lawson.

“His mother is the sister of my ex-wife,” Lawson said. “Diego and his family came a couple of years later to visit us in Post Falls for a little more than a month. Roberto and Diego continue to be a very close part of my life. Diego was a happy little kid, always positive and a little chubby from his parents owning a bakery. His brother and he always had a soccer ball at their feet and they have taught those same traits to my kids through the years. He is personable and always has a smile on his face.”

Lawson has enjoyed watching Diego play what legendary soccer player Pele called the beautiful game.

“You watch him in games, he has incredible balance,” Lawson said. “It frustrates other players because he stays on his feet, he doesn’t get knocked away from the ball.”

ELEVEN YEARS later in 2013, Diego, his mother, Seidy Monge, and Roberto all moved to Post Falls for family reasons and he has attended Post Falls High since his freshman year. Since then, after spending that year playing with Roberto as midfielders, as a sophomore forward and midfielder last season he scored 10 goals and added four assists. This season, he has scored six goals and has five assists, as one of the focal points of the Trojans’ offense. Roberto, now 19 and a former student at Spokane Falls Community College, works in the area. Montse is now 23 and has a younger sister, two-year-old Mia.

Diego said if he draws any recruiting interest from colleges, he’d like to stay in the Pacific Northwest if he can but would take the best scholarship offer, should one come his way.

“I love soccer,” Diego said. “My dad loved playing the game. I started playing when I was 5, then I played at a youth soccer academy for the pro team in Heredia. I knew a little bit of English when we moved here, my brother had no other options but to speak English. Living in Costa Rica, it was different, the culture is different here. I’m glad I grew up there, I speak two languages, which is a major advantage. Soccer gave me more chances. It’s safer here than in Costa Rica, everyone’s so nice. I liked the weather down there, it was never really humid. At night, it was pretty chilly. Making an assist makes me as happy as scoring a goal. Assists make two people happy, scoring makes one person happy.”

As a nephew of the head coach, Diego has also been a student in Lawson’s Spanish class. As a secondary student in Costa Rica, he played club soccer, as there were no high school teams in and around Heredia. Unlike in the U.S., he’d also have to take different classes on different days and at different times during the week. He now takes chemistry and math courses, among others, and had a 3.4 cumulative grade-point average going into this school year.

“I look at him more as an uncle, we’re really close,” Diego said of Lawson. “He lives in Coeur d’Alene, I live near Capone’s (Pub & Grill) in Post Falls. He might not be as tough on me in his class, but he always expects me to do things. On the soccer field, he pushes me a lot. He realizes my potential. I’d come out of a game thinking, ‘Dang, I had a good game’. He’d be like, ‘You could’ve done better.”

DIEGO HAS adjusted just fine assimilating into American culture, as he speaks perfect English with a slight undertone of a Costa Rican accent. This past summer, he spent nearly four hours a day playing video game soccer tournaments with friends on the Post Falls team like Nick Morris. Diego said his favorite team is Barcelona and his favorite player is Messi, a star on the Argentina’s World Cup team. Of course, he follows the Costa Rican national team, which reached the quarterfinals of the 2014 FIFA World Cup for the first time in the country’s history, after beating Greece in penalty kicks in Brazil. He also follows one of Costa Rica’s top players, forward Joel Campbell, who plays for Sporting Lisbon in Portugal and was a wing on Arsenal, one of the top four teams in the Premier League.

“They weren’t expected to get out of the ‘Group of Death’ (in preliminary play),” Esquivel said of the Costa Rica team. “It had Italy, England and Uruguay.”

He grew up playing with Morris, Eli Gregory, and Bailey Massender, all juniors on a team that going into this week was 4-1-3 and 2-1-1 in the 5A Inland Empire League after finishing 5-8-1 last season. The 5A state tournament, should Post Falls make it as one of the top two teams from the Region I tournament, will be held Oct. 20-22 at Post Falls, Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools.

“I’ve never played in state,” said Diego, who started playing for Post Falls the year after the Trojans won the state title with Roberto and star player Timmy Mueller, currently a junior forward at Oregon State. “We’ve got to make it someday. This year we’re going to make it, for sure. That’d be cool (playing nearby), it’d save us a drive. Two years ago, we were up 2-1 on Mountain View (of Meridian, in a state play-in game). Ten seconds before the end of the game, one of their players on the back end scored near the bottom of the corner (of the net). Then they beat us on a golden goal in overtime. It was pretty sad.”

Then there’s Diego’s poofy hair, which goes sideways and above his head quite a bit. Diego is nearly 5-foot-11 and 166 pounds, with his hair making him look nearly 6 feet tall. Think of a Costa Rican version of ‘Sideshow Bob’, sidekick of Krusty the Clown, from the long-running Sunday night Simpsons cartoons on KAYU.

“When I was a kid, I wanted to grow long hair,” Diego said. “She (Seidy) would make me cut it, she got softer as I got older. Eventually she stopped caring. I haven’t really cut it in about two years.”

So just like his big hair, Diego has played and studied big-time in his new home of three years, with his uncle helping lead the way.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, via e-mail at [email protected] or via Twitter @bourq25