CARSON, Calif. - All week long, The Home Depot Center has been teeming with people as Chivas USA's home has been as busy as it has been all year long.
Little of it, though, has anything to do with the beautiful game.
In what long ago became a yearly ritual, the X-Games have taken over the first week of August. While extreme sports now overshadow all the goings on at The Home Depot Center, Chivas USA players are nonetheless taking it all in stride.
"When we practice, it's harder to get into The Home Depot Center," Jonathan Bornstein said. "Sometimes you have to walk through the middle and you can check out everything that's going on. It's pretty cool."
From the outside of the stadium, the mass tents that take up entire sections of the parking lot are visible, as is the giant X-Games logo. Once inside, though, the makeover is more evident.
"It's like a transformation from a field into all different things," Bornstein said of the dirt-covered field. "It doesn't even look the same: different sounds, big dirt jumps, dirt tracks. It's crazy."
In years past, Chivas USA has played a road game while the club has been bumped out of The Home Depot Center. This season, though, the schedule has freed up the Red-and-White from league obligations for the first half of August. In fact, Chivas USA will have no games between their 3-2 loss in Kansas City last Sunday until playing at Toronto FC on Aug. 18.
"You can't complain about it," Ante Razov said. "You just have to go about your business and use those three weeks to prepare to go down the home stretch."
Such a long time between games could have both positive and negative effects. Chivas USA has been playing fairly regularly since the start of the season and players have built up a rhythm as well as an ever-improving mentality. With weeks in between league games, training sessions take on an added significance.
How the players approach the relative down time will make all the difference, Bornstein said.
"Sometimes it can be a good little break because guys get to rest and you get a little down time to yourself. Sometimes it makes you sharper mentally," he said. "It might take a little bit out of you physically if guys don't do anything. We've just got to keep working through that stretch. It's a time to fine-tune some things that you normally don't' get a chance to when you're playing back to back."
Some players, meanwhile, can use the down time.
"For guys like myself and Jesse Marsch, we could use it for some recovery time and to get some fitness in," Razov said. "That's the way the team has to look at it. The older guys have to rest a little bit and work on some fitness to get refreshed and the other guys have to work on some other things."
Chivas USA will play one match during the stretch. The club will play a friendly in Sacramento on Aug. 11. Still, the team's focus remains on preparing for the latter part of the month. After their date in Toronto, Chivas USA will play nine of their remaining 12 games in Carson.
"We'll be able to take a positive from it and use it to our advantage going down the stretch," Razov said. "We've been really good at home ... we've got nine home games coming down the stretch. I think that's big for us."
Luis Bueno is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
