Problems Still Exist on Some Orange County Teams

Most Orange County high school soccer coaches believe the violent and unsportsmanlike acts that caused the sport to be put on probation by the Southern Section usually are committed by teams from outside the county.

Statistics collected by Southern Section officials, however, suggest that is far from the truth.

In fact, 30% of all problems reported to the Southern Section office this season occurred in Orange County, Southern Section administrator Dean Crowley said.

Only 12% (56) of the 452 Southern Section schools participating in soccer are from Orange County.

Of the total of 31 serious incidents reported in the Southern Section, 10 involved Orange County teams.

That was the largest number of reported incidents from any of the Southern Section areas, Crowley said. The next highest area was Los Angeles County, which reported eight incidents.

Crowley said he did not know how many of last year’s 117 incidents in the Southern Section were from Orange County, but said he believed there were fewer this year.

“They improved tremendously,” Crowley said. “Everyone really tried hard to make soccer as positive and wholesome as possible.”

Part of the reason the cases of unsportsmanlike conduct were reduced this year is because the Southern California Soccer Referees Assn. stopped reporting every problem to the Southern Section office.

In past years, an individual referee would notify the Southern Section every time he ejected a player. But this season, the referees association decided to handle incident reports the way officials in most other sports do. Referees now report cases of bad conduct only to the referees association.

An informal survey of 30 boys soccer coaches revealed 22 ejections of a moderately serious nature this season, along with numerous other red cards that the coaches considered minor or technical.

Among the 22 serious incidents in Orange County were:

- Six ejections of coaches, including one in which the Buena Park coach was fired after using obscene language and making threatening gestures at an official.

- Two suspended games, one because of a bench-clearing fight between Woodbridge and Saddleback resulting in eight ejections, and the other following the ejection of five junior varsity players and their coach at Ocean View.

- Three cases of players verbally or physically threatening referees. A Valencia player made a verbal threat to knife a referee, according to Orange County Soccer Referees Assn. president Adnan Bayati.

In another case, a Saddleback player pushed a referee, and a group of University junior varsity players reportedly made verbal threats at a referee in the parking lot after a game.

- Eight cases of players ejected for intentional actions that could endanger the safety of others--including slugging, shoving, submarining and blind-side tackling.

- Three cases of players ejected after abusing referees with profanity.

The frequency of ejections is generally low in the Garden Grove and Freeway leagues, which are among the few in Southern California to adopt specific punishments for ejections. In the Garden Grove League, as under international soccer rules, a player who receives a red card must sit out the next game.

In the Freeway League, a nonviolent red card carries the penalty of one missed game, while a player who receives a violent red card is suspended from the team for the season. By no coincidence, the Freeway league reported the county’s fewest ejections.