He joined the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer and encountered 1 v 1 such stars as David Beckham, Landon Donovan, and MLS scoring leader Chris Wondolowski.

Of course, Gibson, a senior Communications major and Dominican Scholar-Athlete award winner, was carrying his iPhone to tape interviews. That was part of his job during his three-month paid internship with the Earthquakes where he worked in the front office and the press box to assist in media and public relations. Dominican lined him up for the internship and prepared him well for the opportunity, helping him hone his writing skills. His responsibilities for the Earthquakes included writing for the team's website and game-day program, researching and writing bios for Earthquakes and opposing players for game-day notes and dealing with practice and game-day operations.

“When I first came to Dominican, I thought I wanted to be on ESPN,” Gibson says. “Now that I've gotten into an internship where I get to do p.r. and media relations for a professional soccer team – which is a burning passion of mine – this is by far the best experience of my life.

“The office atmosphere was awesome. I enjoyed going to work every day [from home in Monterey]. It wasn't like 'Oh man, I've got to go to work' but 'Yes! I get to go to work and I wonder what I'm going to be doing!'”

The highlight for Gibson was working at the Earthquakes-Los Angeles Galaxy game on June 30 played before more than 50,000 fans at Stanford Stadium. The Quakes rallied from a 3-1 deficit to a 4-3 victory and Gibson had a brush with greatness with Beckham, first escorting him off the field after he received a dissent penalty late in the game, then accidentally bumping into Beckman coming around a corner in the L.A. locker room later after interviewing Donovan and Todd Dunivant for the MLS post-game quote sheet.

“I had my head down and I ran into Beckham,” Gibson says, smiling. “My first thought was I was going to go down in history as the intern who ran into David Beckham and got socked in the face.”

You could say it was an engaged learning experience. Gibson, a goalkeeper at Dominican, made the save, however. He quickly apologized to soccer's megastar, complimented Beckham on his first-half goal, then they shook hands.

“He's such a professional,” Gibson says.

Beckham is winding down his career now, but Gibson is just getting his into gear.

“I remember when Casey showed up in my office his freshman year. When I asked him what he wanted to do after college, he said, 'I want to be a Sports Center anchor,'” Dominican Director of Soccer Jon Delano recalls. “It's not very often that you find a young adult who already knows what type of work they would like to do in the future. Right then and there, I realized I was in the company of a very dynamic individual. Casey has an unbelievable work ethic, which he demonstrates in the classroom and on the field. His work ethic, his character, and his intelligence will no doubt find him success in the future.”

For the time being, Gibson is lending all his attributes to the Penguins' men's soccer team. He returns this year to a young squad that learned to grow up fast last season as it relied on a large freshmen class that received the bulk of the playing time. Delano started as many as nine freshmen at a time in games, led by defenders Cory Vanderpool and Fabian Valdez-Mendoza who logged the most and second most minutes on the field in their inaugural seasons on campus.

Two other Dominican players, forwards Kolby Mitnick and Nuri Bon-Acosta, were named Honorable Mention All-Pacific West Conference last season as freshman, joining sophomore captain David Mendez, who led the Penguins in goals scored, earning him a spot on second team All-PacWest.

In fact Dominican, with Sam Vella, returns its top four goal scorers from last year and they will be teamed with redshirt senior Pedro Guevara. Guevara, the PacWest Pre-Season Player of the Year last season, was injured and eventually redshirted. He had a team-high eight goals and four assists for the Penguins in 2010, and has netted 25 goals for his career at Dominican.

Also returning is sophomore goalkeeper Erik Anderson. He missed the first five games last season recuperating from a fractured leg and started the final 10 games. He was twice named to the PacWest Weekly Top 10 Honor, once after making 16 saves in a 1-0 overtime loss at Humboldt State.

Anderson and the Penguins will open their regular-season schedule against Cal State East Bay on Saturday, September 1, at 4:30 p.m. It will mark the first official men's soccer game on Kennelly Field at the new John F. Allen Athletics Complex at Dominican.

Throw-in the debut of incoming freshman Chris Sennes and UC Irvine transfer Swap Mushiana and it all adds up to an exciting season for the Penguins, who are aiming for a winning record and may be poised to move up in the PacWest standings this season.

“I like everything about this team … We're very versatile,” says Gibson, who is in his fourth year of playing soccer at Dominican. “If I could tell every single team and coach in this conference, I'd tell them to watch out. We're hungry.”

And busy. Aside from his normal college duties, Gibson writes for the school newspaper, The Habit, and last semester was chosen to participate in the 2012 West Region NCAA Career in Sports Forum where he learned to improve and enhance his résumé to help him interview for and attain jobs in the future.

Gibson, a two-time member of the PacWest's All-Academic team and “Coaches Award” winner for the Penguins, has been successful in balancing his academics, athletics, and extra-curricular activities. It is a trait he learned in middle school when his parents, Sherrie and Ronnie, former Grand Canyon National Park law enforcement rangers, stressed good grades and made that a priority over participation in sports.

Eventually, Gibson excelled in all areas and chose to come to Dominican because of its soccer program, the beauty of the campus, and the reputation of its academics and small-college feel.

“I didn't want to go to a school where I was a number,” Gibson says. “I wanted to go to a school where I could walk down pathways and recognize people and know them by name.”

Like Beckham, Donovan, and Wondolowski.