UC Irvine Notebook / John Weyler : Out of Classroom, Onto Soccer Field : Student Steve Shaw Coaches Women’s Team

Somehow, you get the feeling this would never happen to Notre Dame’s football team.

When the members of UC Irvine women’s soccer team showed up for the first day of practice this season, they didn’t know who their coach would be.

And when they found out, it turned out to be a guy they sat next to in biology, or somebody they had danced with at a fraternity party.

Confused? Well, not surprisingly, this is kind of a long story.

Last spring Irvine had hired Lisa Fraser, former coach at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and she made a positive impression on the team during spring workouts. But the University of Washington made a better offer during the summer and Fraser fled, bidding the team farewell via the mail.

About the same time, 22-year-old Irvine student Steve Shaw, former soccer player and Beta Theta Pi president, was coaching a youth club team on a tour of Europe. Shaw, who had planned to help coach the men’s team as a volunteer assistant, had a phone message waiting for him when he arrived back in the States.

“We got in from London and landed in Texas and I called home,” Shaw said. “My mom said to call Kaia (Hedlund, Irvine’s associate athletic director for student affairs). She offered me the job, and I beat my head against the side of the airplane all the way home thinking about it.

“I took the job the next day and had the whole weekend to prepare for the season.”

It was a frantic four days and, so far, there’s no fairy tale ending in sight. The Anteaters are 1-6-1 going into this afternoon’s (3 o’clock) match at Irvine against Chapman.

While certainly not a threat to win a national championship, the Anteaters may not be as weak as their record indicates. Three of their defeats came against opponents ranked in the top 10 and a fourth to a top 20 team.

They also had to play three games with a center-forward and fullback alternating in goal because one goalie broke her hand and the other was on vacation.

And, after all, the players are just getting to know their coach. Well, at least, just getting to know him as a coach.

Forward Kacky Overom, who had been friends with Shaw, said all social relationships came to a screeching halt when he showed up on the field that first day with a whistle around his neck.

“From the minute he stepped on the field, he made it very clear that he was no longer Steve Shaw, he was Coach Shaw,” she said.

Shaw is hardly an intimidating figure. He’s not tall, or particularly muscular, and he smiles a lot. But he was a hard-nosed defender during his playing days and he spends a lot of time talking to his team about dedication and intensity.

They seem to be listening.

“I think they’ve come to respect my decisions,” he said. “It was actually easier than I expected. It was a little uncomfortable at first, but I ask only three things of them: Go 100% every day, work together and have fun.

“I also told them that people would question us as a team, because of my age, and that they would have to stand behind me.”

They weren’t exactly running to line up behind him at first, but Shaw’s slowly winning them over.

“We were all excited about having Lisa as a coach,” halfback Ingrid Evans said. “At first, I think we all compared him to her. We were a little skeptical, but as time went on, we’ve come to respect his knowledge of the game.”

Shaw, a graduate of La Habra High School who still attends classes at Irvine, is 12 units shy of his degree in social ecology and talks about someday having a job on Wall Street. But he loves coaching and can’t think of anything he would rather do at the moment.

Before his current assignment, Shaw’s head coaching experience was limited to guiding a number of youth teams and high school teams. Most recently, he coached the junior varsity at Newport Harbor High.

Shaw inherited 18 players at Irvine, but plans on doing some serious roster revamping, if given the chance. He was hired on an interim basis and Irvine athletic administration officials will review his status after the season.

“Obviously, we’re not producing on a Division I level,” Shaw said. “We need to add some top-quality recruits to compete.”

Soon, he was scampering off to his next class, then he would be scouting a game at Orange Coast before hurrying back for practice, which he had to end in time to plan a fraternity function.

You can’t be too young for this job.

Irvine’s water polo team, which won four consecutive games and the championship of the Air Force tournament, is ranked second in the country in the latest American Water Polo Coaches Assn. poll.

No. 1 California and Irvine both have 9-1 records. The Anteaters’ lost to Cal, 9-5, during the UCI/Toshiba tournament.

Irvine senior Tom Warde, from Marina High, scored his 200th career goal during the Air Force tournament. Warde leads the team with 29 goals this season and has 205 in his career.

Anteater Notes

Brian McCloskey, a sophomore forward from Sunny Hills, has transferred to Loyola Marymount. He will be eligible to play for LMU in 1990-91. McCloskey averaged three points and 1.9 rebounds in 17 games as a freshman at Irvine. . . . Steve Clark and Mark Henry have been named assistant men’s tennis coaches. Clark, an Irvine assistant in 1986-87, was head coach at Chapman College last season and led the Panthers to a No. 4 national ranking. Henry has been head coach at Whittier College the past two seasons. The Anteaters were 25-7 last season and ranked No. 4 in the nation. . . . Senior Trevor Kronemann, the No. 10-ranked singles player in the nation, received an automatic bid to the Volvo Tennis Collegiate Championships, Oct. 19-22 in Athens, Ga.

Women’s soccer Coach Steve Shaw: “As a player, you’d always hear the coach say how busy he was and you’d think, ‘Just how busy can he really be? What’s he got to do?’ Now, after a few weeks of planning workouts, taking care of everybody’s paper work, finalizing the schedule, arranging practice time and scouting JC and high school games, I realize it’s a lot more work than I thought.” . . . The men’s golf team opens its season on Friday in Las Cruces, N.M.