Soca Warriors defender Julius James returned to training with US Major League Soccer’s DC United earlier this week following successful shoulder surgery. The DC United coaches and players reconvened at RFK Stadium to kick off the 2010 preseason under new boss Curt Onalfo, and even ventured outside for a Monday morning session on the RFK Stadium auxiliary turf field, despite 20-degree temperatures and ample snowdrifts that required several hours of shoveling after a weekend storm.

But for James and several other members of the DC squad, preparations for the new campaign have been well underway for months thanks to injuries, international duty and the simple reality of MLS’s ever-increasing physical demands. James earned hero status for playing, and scoring, in the final moments of United’s 2009 finale at Kansas City despite a pulled hamstring. But the T&T international faced a tough challenge in the offseason with his decision to surgically repair a long-nagging shoulder injury that first flared up back in his rookie season with Toronto FC.

“I feel really good, because I’ve had this problem since the beginning of my professional career. It happened to me in Toronto in pre-season. I think we were in South Carolina and my shoulder dislocated down there,” he said. “It’s a lot tighter now. There was some torn stuff and the doctor said he put some nails in there to staple my stuff together. It was pretty loose, actually.”

James, a former St Anthony’s College captain spent his holidays recuperating in DC before returning to the University of Connecticut, his alma mater, to labour through a painful regimen of rehab exercises to restore normal range of movement in his shoulder socket. He later joined other MLS-based alums like O’Brian White and Kevin Burns for fitness work under UConn Huskies strength and conditioning coach Chris West. However this week he is being kept out of scrimmages at DC United and other full-contact activities until mid-February as the the club wind down post-surgery recovery schedules which can often feel slow and frustratingly restrictive, but usually pay off in the end.