It was good to see Brad Evans and Jhon Kennedy Hurtado back out on the pitch for the Sounders today.

However, not all the veterans were ready to go. We got this health update from coach Sigi Schmid:

Nate Jaqua is still recovering right now and (Pat) Noonan is still recovering. We want to see how Blaise (Nkufo) feels tomorrow. O’Brian White is somebody that we’re trying to bring him along fitness-wise – today is the first day that he went through a whole training, even though he came in earlier. But I thought he looked sharp, as did Blaise, and we just have to build up their fitness at the right time. Injury-wise it’s really only Jaqua, Noonan, and then Taylor Graham has a little bit of an issue right now.

(Unfortunately, it was a little bit of a circus out there today, so I’m afraid I wasn’t able to follow up for any more technical diagnosis than “little bit of an issue.”)

Here’s a little more from Schmid:

On Jaqua) He’s exactly where he should be at this point. So from that point we can continue to build on it.

On Jhon Kennedy Hurtado) It’s the same sort of thing with him (as with Jaqua), coming off the length of time that he was out. Today was his first practice. When we get down to Arizona, doing double days, he’ll probably do one training with us, and in the other training he’ll so something else. Same thing with a Brad Evans, all the guys who are sort of easing their way back to it. It’s a mistake when you’ve been out that amount of time to say, ‘OK, you’re going to do what everybody else has done,’ and then all of a sudden they break down with something else. So we’ll ease them back into it and give them the appropriate work.