Subversion 1.5 supports sparse directories. Subversion 14. does not support checkout of a single file, only checkout of directory structures. However, you can use svn export to export a single file.
Note that svn export won't create a versioned working copy.
To make the checkout be non-recursive, use the -N option as shown in the following command: svn checkout https://cs-esx-30.vmdev.net/svn/cs-esx-30/branches -N cs-esx-30 --username johndoe