A Big Goal for Squad : Soccer Team Hopes to Get Kicks Out of Trip to Soviet Union

It’s not “Rocky IV” or an attempt to relive the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s victory over the Russians, but a group of 14- to 16-year-old Orange County soccer players plan to take on the Soviet Union’s most talented junior players during a three-week tour next year.

The Costa Mesa-based soccer league All-Stars plan to match up with some “grass-roots kind of guys for some friendly, low-key, international sports,” said Jeff Elsten, whose son, Tommy, 13, is one of the players.

The 15 teen-agers from the Costa Mesa chapter of the American Youth Soccer Organization plan to make the trip, called the “American Youth Friendship Tour,” in August, 1988, Elsten said.

They Seek $50,000

Meanwhile, the boys and their parents will be working to raise the estimated $50,000 needed to pay for the trip by selling fireworks and sponsoring community luaus.

Also, the team plans to seek matching funds from the Costa Mesa City Council on Monday.

“We took a team to Hawaii last year and raised $15,000. That was no problem,” Elsten said.

About six months ago, coach Pete Oliver and team parents were thinking about other places to send the boys and decided, “Russia’s got to be done,” Elsten said.

Next year’s trip, however, will mean more to the boys than just an opportunity to travel abroad. Elsten’s brother-in-law, James David Ketchum, was one of the two Costa Mesa police helicopter pilots killed in a midair collision with a Newport Beach police helicopter March 10 as the helicopters chased a suspected car thief through Irvine.

Dedicated to Officers

The team has dedicated the trip and each of its 10 to 15 matches in the Soviet Union to Ketchum and John William Libolt, the other pilot killed in the crash.

Parents have been arranging the trip through the Citizens Exchange Council, a nonprofit organization that serves as an intermediary for groups interested in visiting the Soviet Union, said Jan Kausen, whose son, Phillip Chezek, 13, is the team goalkeeper.

“They really are the best to handle something like this because of all their contacts over there,” Kausen said, adding that hotel bills and the travel itinerary must be settled in advance.

This is the first time the Exchange Council has agreed to arrange a trip for a non-professional team of youngsters, Kausen said.

Kausen will fly to Seattle in May to complete plans with Exchange Council officials and to further discuss the AYSO chapter’s efforts to be hosts for a Soviet youth soccer team in 1989, she said.

After six months, “dialogue is just now beginning” with the Soviet Union’s National Sports Council in a bid to bring a Soviet team here, Elsten said:

“Their thrust in the past has been to only send their premier athletes. We’re trying to break them of that because we don’t need the best to play here in Costa Mesa.”

Though traveling to a faraway country may be “kind of scary,” 13-year-old team member Paul Hinkle said he has “no fear of playing them (the Soviet teams). I’m sure they’re good, but we’ve been practicing a lot and playing real good teams (here) to see what we need to improve on.”

Goalkeeper Chezek said: “I think we’ll do pretty well.”