CLOSE-UP : Kicking Around the South Seas

In the South Pacific, soccer is called football and friends are called mates. For the internationally inclined, such nominal nuances are important--as soccer Coach Ed Ayala will gladly explain.

The Rowdies, for example, used to be a boys soccer team, named after the North American Soccer League’s Tampa Bay Rowdies. When Ayala took the Conejo team on a cultural exchange trip to Australia two years ago, he quickly discovered that rowdy to the Aussies meant trouble for the Americans.

“Rowdy meant a ruffian, a rough or tough guy,” Ayala said. “So, with that name, the Australian, French and Polynesian men’s soccer teams were very eager to beat us. . . . We managed to tie one match, but we lost the rest.”

So, when Ayala decided to take his women’s soccer team on a play-as-you-go tour of the South Seas, he suggested a name change.

“My women’s team was called the Kamikazes,” Ayala said. “But that name didn’t seem appropriate in the South Pacific. So, I changed the name to the California Dolls.”

The California Dolls, however, is more than just an Ayala team alias--it is composed of the best players from five women’s soccer teams in the San Fernando and Conejo valleys, including the Kamikazes. The Dolls will be kicking around the South Seas for three weeks, starting with matches in Brisbane, Australia, on Sunday and ending in New Zealand and Tahiti.

The group will go through eight airports, stay in most places only three days and play at least one match each day.

The travel agenda offers almost as much continuous action as the sport itself.

“Knowing the game as well as I do, I anticipate moves and strategies and am constantly involved,” Ayala said. “I’m nearly exhausted after every match. The players each play one position, but I play 11.”

Ayala says he recruited only the best looking women he could find for the Dolls--and trained them to play soccer.

“They range in age from 18 to 42,” he says. “And they’re all beautiful. Even the officials can’t believe it when they come onto a soccer field.”

The team, all dolled up in white satin uniforms, does get its share of attention, but will disband when the trip ends Aug. 20.

The demise of the Dolls, however, means the reprise of the Kamikazes.

But, according to Ayala, by a Kamikaze by any other name is still a doll.