The training schedule afforded Davy Arnaud a chance to come back home for a special occasion.

“I was there,” he said. “Wasn’t that crazy? I hadn’t been at a Mid-County Madness game since I was in high school.”

Yeah, that occasion.

If Arnaud, a 1999 Nederland graduate, felt like a winner then, imagine how high he’ll be if the Houston Dynamo bring home the MLS Cup.

Cloud No. 9 is pretty high.

When Arnaud was in high school, Jorge Lopez was his soccer coach and Monte Barrow was a young assistant coach on Larry Neumann’s football staff. In an area where only football can command 10,000 or so fans like Friday night’s game also known as the Bum Phillips Bowl, soccer was Arnaud’s ticket.

Through Canyon, Texas, where he played collegiately, and Kansas City, where he broke into Major League Soccer, Arnaud’s road has brought him back to Houston, where he works as an assistant coach for the Dynamo — a two-time MLS champion.

The 50^th overall selection in the 2002 MLS draft came close to winning America’s biggest soccer prize in his third year in the league. He was a midfielder for the Kansas City Wizards (now Sporting Kansas City) when they were topped by D.C. United in the MLS Cup. Arnaud finished his playing career with the United in 2015.

Now 37, he can relate to the current Dynamo player’s drive to a title.

“I use my experience to help each player develop their game,” said Arnaud, who specialized in the Dynamo’s offense under coach Wilmer Cabrera.

The MLS playoff system is nothing like the NBA’s or MLB’s. The first, or knockout, round, is one-and-done, and Houston survived that against Sporting KC 1-0.

Then there are two rounds of two-leg, or two-match, series, the conference semifinals and conference finals. The goal (pardon the pun) in each is to score the most combined goals after two matches.

Houston went scoreless against the Portland Timbers in the first leg and won the second leg 2-1 to advance.

“A lot of people don’t realize how grueling the two-leg aggregate is,” Arnaud said. “Sure, you play for 90 minutes in a game. You can’t win a series in the first match, but you sure can lose it in the second.”

On Nov. 21, the Dynamo host the Seattle Sounders in their first leg of the Western Conference finals. The second leg is Nov. 30 in Seattle.

The conference champions will meet in a one-match MLS Cup Dec. 9.

Could Houston celebrate a second champion this year?

“We’re definitely going to try. We’re definitely inspired by what the Astros did for the city.”

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I.C. Murrell can be reached at 549-8541 or at ic.murrell@panews.com. On Twitter: @ICMurrellPANews