Footloose : Kickers Adopt Amateur Status to Accommodate CSUN Players

Introducing the California Kickers: More than the name has been changed to protect the innocent.

A year ago, they were the brand-new Hollywood Kickers of the Western Soccer Alliance. They played at Birmingham High in Van Nuys but claimed a more glamorous community over the hill as their home.

Now they’re back, calling North Campus Stadium at Cal State Northridge home, an entire state their constituency and an entire league their fiefdom, having won the WSA championship a year ago.

But the change in the 1987 Kickers runs deeper than a name or a home. A year ago, this was a semi-pro team, paying its players a small base salary, plus bonuses based on attendance and victories. The money didn’t exactly pay the rent, but it did permit the players to exist by augmenting their incomes with a part-time job.

This year, the Kickers are officially amateurs. None of the players is being paid.

The reason, according to head coach Dieter Hochheimer, is to allow undergraduate Cal State Northridge players to perform for the Kickers without losing their college eligibility.

Matador/Kickers include forwards Joey Kirk and Frank Cubillos, midfielder Michael McAndrew, and defenders Scott Murray and Thor Lee. That’s about one-third of the Kickers’ roster. Two of the Northridge players still have collegiate eligibility. Kirk and Lee both will be seniors next season at CSUN.

These are happy days for Lee, regardless of whether there is a payday.

“Spring time is lag time for college soccer,” he said. “For me, the Kickers is just about the most competitive soccer I’ve ever played, including college. It can only help me.”

For McAndrew, still a Northridge student but no longer a student/athlete, the no-pay-for-play policy is harder to take.

“It’s a little disappointing to me,” he said. “I had hoped to make this a part-time job. I figured I could do this while going to school. Now I have to get a part-time job and do this and go to school.

“But I still love to play and this gives me a chance to keep my options open. I may want to take a shot at indoor soccer later on, but it’s just too hard to play indoor and go to school. If you don’t play any soccer, you kind of disappear. So this way, I can keep my options open while finishing school.”

The Kickers’ motives for playing on the same field as the Matadors and using many of the same faces is pretty obvious. Unable to build their own base of support last year despite a championship season, the Kickers hope to hook onto the coattails of Marwan Ass’ad, soccer’s Pied Piper of Parthenia.

Ass’ad, the CSUN soccer coach, has created Valley-wide interest in his team by producing three straight California Collegiate Athletic Assn. championships and, with those titles, crowds of as many as 3,000.

The Kickers averaged about 1,500 last year. For last week’s home opener against the L.A. Heat, the North Campus crowd was about 700.

Of course, when you are doing as poorly as the Kickers at the gate, not paying your players can serve another valuable purpose--paying your bills. Hochheimer concedes his team lost money last year and the early prospects this time around aren’t much better.

The Kickers are lining up games at the end of the season against top-flight competition from Scotland, England and Denmark, and Hochheimer hopes those matches will draw 3,000 to 4,000.

The Kickers--like the rest of the WSA--also are playing from March to June, rather than May to August as they did last year.

“The summer is dead time,” Hochheimer said. “Everyone is on vacation. People are here at Northridge now. Sports are happening. We have got to get them out.

“The start is not easy. We have to get the word out that we exist. We know the beginning is not going to be easy, but we are confident that one day, people are going to come out and enjoy it.

“Soccer is the No. 1 sport in the world. America has recognized it. One day, this country will accept it. The soccer wave is rolling into the colleges right now. It’s going to be really big there in the next one, two, three years. That’s why we want to hook up with college soccer. From there on, where will these players go? We want them to move on to the pros. We don’t want to waste the talent. Northridge is recognized as a soccer point through the games of the Matadors. We want to show the spectators what comes next.”

Sound strategy. Just so long as there are some spectators to show.