The Next Step

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Venice Coach Angelo Gasca was standing in the middle of the Gondoliers home field Friday night, staring into space like a man who just saw his home burn down.

Now he must convince his team -- which lost its bid for a perfect season after being upset by visiting Banning, 21-19 -- that its season has not gone up in smoke.

In other years Gasca and the Gondoliers would have been happy with a 4-1 record going into Western League play. But not in 2007. The goals and ambitions were larger than that; an undefeated regular season, a first or second seeding for the playoffs, getting to the City Section Championship Division final, maybe winning it all. And Gasca had no trouble telling that to anyone who would listen.

Most of those goals are still attainable.

Some of it depends whether Gasca and his staff can keep other teams from exploiting the weaknesses that Banning exposed.

The rest depends on how much belief the Gondoliers can restore in themselves that the season did not end when Curtis McNeal was stopped for the two-point conversion that would have tied the score against Banning.

This is the mountain Gasca and Venice must climb.

‘All the credit to Banning. They played a great game, they controlled the clock, they beat us up front, they won the game,’ Gasca said. ‘But we have to move forward. There is so much to play for. Now we’ll find out what we’re about.

‘We’ve got five league games coming up. The playoffs are coming up. We’re clearly one of the better teams and so are [the Pilots]. I’m not going to hang myself because we lost a nonleague game. But I’m going to get my team together, and make them understand part of life is getting back up and getting back into the fight. That’s what we’re going to do.’

- Mike Terry