On Tap with ... Max Gallin

After the men’s soccer team plays its last games of the season, junior goalkeeper Max Gallin may try his hand at some new activities during the off-season, one of which involves becoming a televised yoga instructor. The Tigers have faced some difficult teams this season, including a last-minute loss to Columbia on Saturday night. The ‘Prince’ sat down with the junior goalkeeper, who is described by teammate and junior defender David Dubow as “the most nice, energetic, friendly person” he knows.

Q: Where are you from, and what is it like there?

A: I’m from the wonderful city of Tarpon Springs, Florida. And it is warm, kinda boring, but a very relaxing place to live. When you think Florida, you think beaches and Disney World, but literally there is nothing to do there. There’s an occasional Guido nightclub.

Q: Guido nightclubs are boring?

A: Definitely not, but there’s not a lot of culture [in Tarpon Springs] or big cities, so no one in their right mind wants to come down to Florida between the months of April to September ’cause it’s so damn hot so you’ll never get an interesting band or even an interesting figure ’cause it’s so damn hot. But it’s a relaxing place to live. I miss it up here when it’s snowing and 20 degrees and raining on my face.

Q: So would you say you’re an upper-east coast guy and want to end up in the city?

A: I like it, but I don’t know if I could adapt to city life. The bustle is good though — there’s so much to do in such a little area. I was home last summer and I found ways to make myself productive. I always have a soft spot in my heart for being home ... it’s just so easy and if there’s nothing to do, you literally do nothing, you just relax 24-7.

Q: Disney or Universal?

A: Universal — not because of Harry Potter World though. I went there and I thought it was a little bit disappointing. Everyone who hasn’t been might shake their heads, but I went on a day that was completely empty, so there was no wait to get into Harry Potter World, no wait to get onto the rides or anything. It was awesome. Pretty realistic. Just maybe the fact I wasn’t waiting in line, the whole amusement park experience wasn’t there. So I was done within an hour.

Q: An hour?

A: Yeah! And I’m kind of a Harry Potter fan, but I still wasn’t completely sold on it. But the rest of the park ... Islands of Adventure is awesome, and that could take the cake over Disney any day.

Q: What do you like most about playing soccer?

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A: I’m a goalie, so I don’t get to score goals. That’s pretty exciting ... I don’t know. What do I like about playing soccer? It’s fun. Especially from my position, it’s a sport in which you have a lot of individual responsibility, you have a lot of opportunity to really take control of the game. At the same time, you’re playing with 10 other guys and you have to work together to achieve a common goal. A forward would probably be like, “Yo, I’m just trying to score some goals and shit like that.” But I’m a goalie, so I don’t have to do any running.

Q: When did you start playing soccer?

A: Around age four or five. It’s been a while. I did the whole little kid thing ... soccer, baseball, hockey. No football. Soccer, baseball and hockey was the three-pronged attack for my childhood — the “Max Gallin three-pronged attack.”

Q: If not soccer, what sport would you do?

A: Not baseball. I hated baseball from the day I stepped on the diamond. My dad loved baseball, and he wanted me to play baseball. He played football in college and also could have played baseball. Hockey was kinda fun, but you’re not gonna play hockey if you’re from Florida. They don’t even have indoor ice because it’s so freaking hot. Maybe football. I played football senior year of high school, which was so much fun.

Q: You played football until pretty recently then?

A: Yeah, I played pretty far along ... I mean, I kicked. So that’s not totally real football, but it was cool. I like the culture behind it. When you’re a kicker you don’t have to do too much, but you get to wear a helmet and shoulder pads and you get to feel badass. Like a gladiator.

Q: What is your dream job? A kicker in the NFL?

A: I’d probably be one of those stay-at-home dads. I have a lot of respect for people who relax all of the time and keep their stress in check. I love it. Actually, to be completely honest, if I had a dream job, I’d probably be a yoga instructor. I’ve really picked up “Infinity for Yoga” lately.

Q: Would you be a hot yoga instructor?

A: No, definitely not. I sweat too much for hot yoga. I sweat in non-hot yoga classes, so if I did hot yoga, I’d probably just be a dry Ramen noodle by the end. But yeah, I’d be a yoga instructor. I could be around all sorts of flexible human beings and by some sort of osmosis, I’d probably be able to do the positions too. I guess you have to be relatively good at yoga in order to be a yoga instructor. I’ve gone three or four times this year and I’m not bad at it. But I do have a bad tendency that if I finally get into a position and I can’t see what other people are doing, I end up holding it for 30 minutes too long and I look around and I still have my ass in my face and people have gone into downward dog. So if I’m head of the class I get to dictate what we’re doing. I get to set the pace.

Q: Who is your quirkiest teammate?

A: We have a really weird team. It depends on what kind of quirky. We have some people with weird things going on in the back. After the Cameron Porter article [in the ‘Prince’ on Oct. 6], someone sent out a picture of him in crazy princess wizard gear from when he was a child. Some of the seniors on our team are pretty crazy. But then, in general, we have an extremely strange team. You could pick anyone out on our team and say, “They’re not normal.”

Q: Is that a prerequisite to being on the soccer team?

A: Maybe. I mean, we hang out with each other so much and we go through preseason together. Even if [any guy on the team] had the chance to be relatively normal when he got here, by the time we get back to campus, we’ve all been brainwashed and converted. We’re not a cult though. We don’t drink the blood or anything like that.

Q: Does the team have any odd rituals?

A: No, not really. We have a few … no, we just listen to music. We used to do a bunch of war chants in a huddle, but we stopped doing them. Now we just wanna take care of business so we’re like “yo, let’s go do this shit.”

Q: Does the team have any groupies?

A: Groupies? Um, probably my roommate Rohan. He comes to every game and sits behind the cage. By himself sometimes, which is awesome. There’s a few English folks who always come out to the games — I just know them by their accents. Otherwise, we’ve had a decent turnout this year. I can’t name any more names but, there’s people out there.

Q: Soccer is definitely a fun sport to watch.

A: I know, right? That’s what I’m trying to say. You can just yell things. It’s not too loud [in the stands] and you can sit close enough to the field that you can really distract and hurt someone’s feelings if you want to yell at someone — that’s happened to me. It’s a great opportunity to let out some stress and anger, etc. I think some people caught onto the therapeutic aspect [of watching soccer] and have been showing up more.

Q: What is the best part about being an athlete on campus?

A: The best part of being an athlete is that it’s awesome representing something bigger than you. I played club soccer in high school and now I constantly remember that I’m playing soccer for Princeton University. I think that’s awesome representing the institution and the entire student body every time I step out onto the field. We’re playing for Princeton, and that’s pretty awesome. It’s such a community — Princeton University is a huge community in itself, and then there’s Princeton soccer. We’ve had some great successes in the past few years, so people have definitely noticed us. It’s so nice to get a lot of respect and a lot of attention, not to be an attention whore or anything, but ...

Q: But ... you’ll take it?

A: I’ll take it. No, but it’s so powerful to wear the Princeton crest under my jersey ... pretty neat.

Q: How does being on TV feel then?

A: Awesome. I checked my Facebook after the game and had like 95 notifications. Twenty were from my mom, but it felt great. I told everyone I know to watch ESPNU. I kind of made sure that I didn’t do anything weird like pick my nose ... I may or may not have done a few push ups and flexed a few times to try to make myself look really good to the masses. I smiled a few times when I had no point to be smiling. I wish I could be on TV more.

Q: Maybe this yoga instructor thing is the ticket to more TV time?

A: [Yoga for TV] is an untapped market!

Q: What is the worst part about being an athlete on campus?

A: The worst part, I would say, is that it is a big time commitment. It’s difficult to have class until 4:20 p.m., run down to practice by 4:30, get out of practice at 7, eat quickly, do your five-page paper due the next day. Then, repeat. That definitely takes a toll on the body and the mind.

Q: What is your favorite thing to do when not practicing soccer?

A: Hate to say it, but I play a lot of FIFA. I’m kind of shameful but at the same time, it’s so mindless ... you get to sit down, turn on the TV and stare at little tiny guys running around on the field for like three hours straight, and you don’t know where your time goes. All of the sudden it’s 4 a.m. and I have class the next day. I could have done homework or reading. You regret it, but it’s so great playing at the time. FIFA is like the only thing I do. Maybe off season I’ll find something more interesting to do. Well, probably get better at yoga, I’m still working on my plans to become the first famous, televised yoga instructor.

Q: What was your “welcome to college” moment?

A: I had a few. The first academic moment was the first time I had to pull an all-nighter. That was something I had never done in high school. [Back then], I went to bed at 10 p.m. every night no matter what. I had to. I had to wake up at 6 a.m. every morning ... something I wouldn’t dream of now. I was definitely on a good sleep schedule. Between pulling an all-nighter for my first real [college] paper and experiencing the first midterms week, those were my academic [welcome to college moments]. My other moment was taking ECO 100: Introduction to Microeconomics. Harvey Rosen was great. The midterm was not.

Q: What is your most embarrassing moment at Princeton?

A: Yeah ... I was playing beach volleyball and seriously injured myself on the court right outside of Wilson. I was trying really hard and being really competitive. I went to go hit a ball and stepped in a hole in the sand. I seriously messed up my ankle and was writhing on the ground while everyone thought I was kidding. I felt like a doofus because I had just gotten healthy from my first ankle sprain [in soccer]. I wasn’t so embarrassed but, really? Playing beach volleyball and getting a real injury like that? It was such a freak accident. I tried playing it off like I wasn’t hurt. I watched my ankle swell up to the size of a golf ball and I was like, “I’m fine, I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine at all.

Q: What are you majoring in at Princeton? What’s the best part about being in the department?

A: I’m majoring in sociology, and it’s an incredible department. The professors, students, everyone I’ve met is extremely interesting and insightful. I haven’t taken a SOC class yet that I didn’t like. I took my first class with Mitch [Duneier]. Love him. All of the other professors are really interesting too. There’s a broad range of topics that you can study. “Interesting” is a terrible word to use, but the classes really force you to think in a new way.

Q: What’s your favorite class at Princeton?

A: I took an inequality class that really exposed the truth on so many [sociological] problems that you would never really think about unless you took this class. The class revealed so much about society that isn’t readily apparent. It was called “Inequality of Race, Class and Gender” with a visiting professor. It’s unbelievable how unjust some social phenomena are in America today. You’d think that because we’re in the 21st century we would have figured a lot of this out by now. We’re relatively tolerant as a society. This class proved a lot of that wrong. It’s like, we need to get our shit together, because some of this stuff is outrageous. There was a particular study about minorities in Milwaukee, and we studied employment rates [of educated minorities] in comparison to those of white ex-convicts. It turned out the white ex-cons had twice as much success getting a job than educated Latinos and three times as much success as a black man or woman. The class was very sobering. I learned that we take way too much for granted.

Q: Do you have any hidden talents?

A: Well, a lot of people know about my yoga abilities. I’m pretty public about that. I often wear yoga spandex and carry a mat around. I play guitar, but it’s been tough to find time in college ... it’s been picked up once this year.

Q: Do you have any quirky nicknames?

A: Galpal or Maxipad.

Q: Do you have a “Max Gallin Anthem”?

A: Probably a good R&B slow jam. It’s gotta be Usher.

Q: Old Usher or New Usher?

A: Definitely Old Usher. “You Remind Me” by Usher. We were thinking of doing an a cappella rendition of that song freshman year, but I’m not exactly a singer.

Q: If you could have your own reality show, what would be the show’s focus?

A: Part of me likes some combination of “Ace of Cakes” and “Wipeout.”

Q: I’ve never seen them.

A: Neither have I. I just don’t like reality television. It’s hard to stand. I don’t watch “Jersey Shore,” but it’s very entertaining.

Q: What’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened during a game?

A: I slid for a ball in my senior year of high school and my pants came completely off. I was completely naked on the field. Afterwards, I moved more quickly than I ever had. Putting my pants back on took like negative one second. But I had just started wearing a new uniform that clearly wasn’t very secure around the waistband area and sliding didn’t help. Then, nudity. No pictures were taken, I hope.

Q: Who is your professional athletic role model?

A: LeBron James. [Junior defender] Mark [Linnville] is gonna hate me for saying this. LeBron is basically a brand. He’s so cocky, but he’s so talented at the same time. Everyone knows who LeBron James is. “The Decision” was the douchiest thing that someone could ever do, I lost some stock in him then, but I’m a Miami Heat fan now. I’ve been looking for a $20 Miami Heat jersey on eBay for the past year. I haven’t succeeded yet. What’s up Dave? [Teammate David Debow walks up to table in Frist.]

Dave: On Tap with Max Gallin? Max Gallin is the most nice, energetic, friendly person I know. He always puts a smile on my face. But he’s always serious on the field.

A: That was so candid, wow. Reality TV right there.

Q: What are your favorite pro teams?

A: Manchester United. Tampa Bay sports too. Or the Saints when they go 16-0 and win the Super Bowl.

Q: Lastly, what do you want Princeton to remember you for? Or do you have any parting words of wisdom?

A: I wish I could include this picture of Cameron Porter that we found after his article. His princess outfit is so pretty, but I don’t think blackmailing is allowed in the ‘Prince.’ But as far as being remembered, what David said. Word for word.