Remembering Chico Borja, who made goals, friends in Las Vegas

You didn’t have to kick the soccer ball around with Chico Borja to have formed a lasting impression of the former Las Vegas Americans star who died Jan. 25 in Florida at age 61.

But that’s how he and former UNLV soccer star Simon Keith were introduced.

“Chico was a beast; he played for the U.S. National Team, he played for the (New York) Cosmos, probably one of the all-time greatest indoor players,” Keith recalled of his longtime friend who recently lost his battle with cancer. “I played against Chico in my indoor days. We used to kick each other pretty good …”

Like an unmarked striker in front of the net, Keith then got down to business.

“Listen, he played with Pele and Giorgio Chinaglia and (Franz) Beckenbauer — I mean, c’mon,” Keith said in summarizing Borja’s bona fides with the spotted ball.

Borja was born in Ecuador before attending and playing soccer for the New Jersey Institute of Technology after his family immigrated to the U.S. He scored 17 goals in 68 matches for the vaunted Cosmos before becoming one of indoor soccer’s biggest stars.

Borja scored 24 goals in 28 games for the Americans of the Major Indoor Soccer League in their one-and-done season of 1984-85 at the Thomas & Mack Center before embarking on 84- and 90-goal seasons for the Wings of Wichita, where he was more popular than the airline industry. Decades after he retired, he had a beer named for him there. An American Wheat Classic, they call it Chico Beer-ja.

But there was another side to Borja that had little to do with booting a spotted ball into the back of a net.

“He was one of those guys who walked in the room and the lights got a little brighter,” Keith said.

Friends for life

T.J. Love remembers sitting close to the Plexiglas and watching Borja kick the spotted ball into the net for the short-lived Americans when Love was still a youngster. His dad, Jay, was a vice president of the old Dunes hotel-casino and one of the team’s major benefactors.

“We became really close with the entire team, but for some reason, Chico just sort of attached to my dad, and he and my dad became best buddies. They played golf. My dad was kind of teaching him because he had taught me how to play,” recalled Love, who was a state golf champion at Clark High and then played for UNLV.

Charismatic, affable, never had a bad day — Chico was the man as far as T.J. Love and his family were concerned. Long after the demise of the Americans, he would come to Las Vegas to play golf. Chico would come over for dinner, Love recalled. He was like family.

And then a few years ago, when Love’s 11-year-old daughter, Brienna, became so ill she would require a heart transplant, they talked more often. Chico had gotten very sick himself and had required a kidney transplant, T.J. Love said.

“We had gotten a Flight for Life to Utah, had the transplant, and once we had kind of gotten settled in and started calling people, he was one of the first. Not just because he was like family, but because he had been through something similar,” Love said.

Heart of the matter

Love said Chico was one of those guys who could put on a positive spin on anything — even a heart transplant for a little 11-year-old girl.

“He was just that kind of guy, you know?” Love said. “So when I called him, he settled me down, and during that conversation, he said there’s a guy named Simon Keith in Las Vegas you should probably call.”

Three years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Chico when he came to Las Vegas to support Brienna Love at her school. Her math class students helped her celebrate her second chance at life during a surprise party arranged by Keith, a two-time heart transplant survivor.

Chico Borja shook my hand as if he was still scoring goals, and I was president of his fan club.

I’ll always remember his smile, and how when he walked in the room at the Canarelli Middle School, the lights seem to get a little brighter.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.