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For the better part of a 10-week preseason, while Las Vegas Lights FC coaches and players prepared for the club’s inaugural USL season, Jorge Guillen-Torres worked quietly on the side.
Building back strength and endurance to rehab a lower body injury suffered in training in late January, he would also observe his teammates, who were simultaneously training and building chemistry.
“That was my first time ever dealing with a lengthy injury,” Guillen-Torres said. “In the beginning, I was asking myself ‘Where am I going to be? Are they going to keep me around?’”
It was hard for him not to think that way at the beginning of his rehab process.
Guillen-Torres suffered his injury just ahead of February’s Soccer Spring Training, missing three opportunities to face Major League Soccer competition. But at the same time, what helped lock him in on his rehab was the vote of confidence he received from Chelís and the Lights FC coaching staff.
They assured him early on that they wanted to give him a real look, thus meaning he’d get a fair shot at making an impact once he was healthy enough to do so. All he had to focus on was getting there.
He did just that, and in return has quickly made an impact since his return.
Guillen-Torres, a 23-year-old San Diego, Calif., native, showed promise early in training camp as a fast, versatile presence along the left sideline on both ends of the field. He’s picked up right where he left off in January, starting each of the club’s last three matches since being cleared to play, and playing the full 90 minutes in each outing.
As he’s now making a strong impact, he realizes the injury may have been a blessing in disguise.
“I think the No. 1 thing I learned during that time was patience,” he said. “You start to realize that whatever happens will happen, and if you get the opportunity you want, you can’t take it for granted.
“I stuck to the game plan they had for me, I stayed prepared and, at the same time, gained confidence in what I was doing.”
In three starts as the team’s left back, Guillen-Torres has been accurate on 67.4% of his 43 passes, while winning 20 of 38 duels and nine of his 11 tackle attempts.
On the offensive end, known as being a relentless worker, he’s shown some flashes of the ball skills that could make him a true dual-threat player the rest of the way. Maybe the brightest of those moments was this setup through traffic in the 80th minute of Saturday’s 1-1 draw vs. Tulsa Roughnecks FC, with Lights FC looking to push ahead:
Still, if his preseason injury and subsequent rehabilitation in the preseason left a lasting impression, it’s to never get too high when things are going well, and at the same time never get too low when it’s the other way around.
“I’m not really pleased, because I always expect a lot more,” Guillen-Torres added. “The one thing I can learn from these three games I’ve played so far is I can get a little more confident. Hopefully, they give me the opportunities to keep playing and get more confident.”
