Entering year 20 as a professional, Jon Busch knows his days as a pro soccer player are coming to an end. With that knowledge, the 39-year-old goalkeeper has embarked on a new challenge with Indy Eleven while also taking the first step towards establishing himself in his post-playing career.

After spending the majority of two decades in MLS, the veteran goalkeeper signed with the NASL club in January to join the eighth team of his professional career. With the move, Busch is given the chance to continue his illustrious career in a new league under the watch of a longtime colleague, head coach Tim Hankinson.

However, the move to Indy also produced several additional perks for the 2008 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year. Busch is also set to serve as the club’s director of goalkeeping, a new role which will see him contribute to first team coaching and scouting while also serving as an occasional coach with the club’s NPSL team and clinic program.

“It’s been good. It’s been a learning experience and a new challenge,” Busch told SBI. “I’m excited about it. It’s been a long time, 18 years, as part of MLS in some capacity, but, for me, this is exciting. I was ready for a new challenge, and this is it.

“They gave me the opportunity to start that, still as a player, but to start learning the coaching side. That was a big thing for me. I never chased money, I’ve never done anything for the money side of it, but I’ve always done it for the right feel. Talking with them, talking with people in the league, talking to buddies that have played here or played against Indy, it just ended up where, the more I looked into it, it just made sense that this was the right place for me.”

In his new role, Busch is looking forward to passing along some of the lessons he has learned throughout his career.

Busch pointed to several mentors who helped mold him into the player and person he is today. Early in his career, Busch said Pat Onstad, Scott Garlick and Mike McGinty took him under their wings to help teach him the important lessons needed by a young player. As he got older, Busch relished the opportunity to learn from U.S. Men’s National Team legend Kasey Keller at the top level.

Now a veteran himself, Busch is looking to impart those lessons on the next generation, including 23-year-old Indy Eleven goalkeeper Keith Cardona. Despite his desire to give back to the game as a coach, Busch said he doesn’t see himself leading a team as a head coach any time soon. Rather, Busch would prefer to stick to the position that he has devoted his career to.

“My whole life has been goalkeeping, and that’s kind of all I know. I want to focus on that,” Busch said. “I love discussing goalkeeping. I love breaking it down. I video tape every goalkeeper session and break it down and go over it with the other goalkeepers. I also send it to two or three goalkeeper coaches whose opinions I value and they look at my stuff as well. I really enjoy breaking it down and looking at it and that’s going to be my focus when I’m done playing. I want to be a full-time goalkeeping coach.

“What I’ve noticed over the last four, five, six years with more and more of these young guys coming into the MLS and NASL, it’s just the consistency from day to day. They’re all very talented goalkeepers, but the very best, if you look at the history of the MLS and NASL, the very best were consistent game in and game out. Scott and Pat were two of the most consistent over an eight- or 10-year period over the early years of MLS. That was the thing I took away the most: every day come to work, do it at a high level, and that’s going to keep you around for a long, long time.”

While Busch has been around for a long, long time, the 39-year-old still has something left to give on the field.

Busch made 12 appearances for the Chicago Fire last season after appearing 34 times the year prior for the San Jose Earthquakes. In his first start for Indy Eleven, Busch made three stops to help preserve an Indy Eleven shutout in a scoreless draw with the Tampa Bay Rowdies.

Alongside fellow veteran additions like Colin Falvey, Nemanja Vukovic and Nicki Paterson, Busch is just one of a group of experienced players hoping to lead Indy Eleven in the club’s third season.

Busch said his goal is to give his team a chance to win games. Whether he makes 10 saves a game or just one, Busch believes he can help Indy Eleven on the field throughout the 2016 campaign.

“When you get a guy that has over 400 games at the professional level and who has won cups, you get a tremendous voice and organizer and leader from behind,” Hankinson told SBI. “I’ve known Jon since he was at IMG Academy when I was coaching the Tampa Bay Mutiny in the MLS days. He would come train with us. Jon is just a constant overachiever and it’s infectious in a positive way with everyone around him. He’s a great building block.

“All of these senior guys have all of these leadership qualities,” Busch added. “It makes it easy when you have those guys around. For me, I do my business. I don’t try and do anything out of the ordinary or anything I haven’t done in my whole career. I’m an organizational goalkeeper. I like to bark, I like to help out the boys in the back, and that’s me and it always will be me, but it’s nice to have those other senior voices to make it a little bit easier.”

With plenty of new challenges in front of him, Busch is excited for the year ahead. The goalkeeper has been given the best of both worlds as he continues to enjoy his playing career while preparing for what lies ahead when it comes to a close.

But, when the time comes, Busch will be ready. The longtime goalkeeper will be given the chance to move from one passion to the next while continuing his relationship with the position he loves.

“My biggest thing is that I want to be able to train at the level I’ve been training at for the last 10-15 years in the present moment,” Busch said. “If I can’t do that and I can’t do my business day-to-day, I’m going to walk away. I don’t want to be one of the guys telling stories about what he used to do. If I woke up tomorrow and I couldn’t train at the level I wanted to, I’d walk in to Hankinson’s office and tell him that I’m retired. I have too much respect for this position and too much respect for this game to stay around when you can’t do the business.

“It’s year-to-year. At the end of this season, I’ll reevaluate, I’ll sit with Hank and my wife and we’ll see. I have an option to play next year. If it makes sense to do it, I will. If it makes sense to walk away and close one chapter and start the next chapter, I’ll have no complaints. This is year 20 and I’ve been around a lot longer then I ever imagined I would in the beginning.”