The Other Side of Perfection : Palos Verdes Soccer Team Finds It Tough to Keep Winning Them All

Even perfection has its downside.

Basically all you can do after you’ve won everything is try to maintain it. And that hasn’t been an easy task this season for the Palos Verdes High soccer team.

In the kind of season usually left in the closets of one’s imagination, Palos Verdes went 33-0 last year en route to the Southern Section 4-A Division championship.

But there were lingering effects of the dream season that this year’s team inherited, most notably a win streak that had the Sea Kings wanting.

There also were positions to fill because of graduation or relocation, and even though it was not discussed openly, there was an underlying pressure to perform at the championship level. Which the Sea Kings did, for a while.

They began this season by winning their first seven games. But then the inevitable happened.

They lost.

The odds eventually caught up with them. But before they were beaten, they had accomplished their goal by extending their victory streak to 40 games without a loss or a tie. The previous record without a loss or tie was believed to be 38 games by San Gabriel High in the early 1970s.

But according to records kept by soccer officials--South Torrance boys Coach Roger Bryant and Simi Valley girls Coach Mark Johnson--the record was 21 victories set by San Gabriel over the 1970-71 and ‘71-72 seasons.

“I don’t know where we came up with the 38,” Palos Verdes Coach Alan King said. “We never really looked it up. Someone said they saw it in the paper, so we went with it.”

At the beginning of this season, the win streak was the Sea Kings’ motivation. But after they were defeated by San Marcos, 1-0, in the semifinals of the South Torrance Tournament, they needed to find a new source of motivation.

“I think we had to rethink our game strategy and mental approach,” said senior halfback Doug Kay. “Things ran smooth at the beginning of the season, then we started breaking down defensively and we were not being aggressive. We had no heart to play a whole game.

“But now we’re coming together as a team.”

And their play shows it. Palos Verdes is ranked No. 2 in the 4-A Division coaches poll and has won 10 of its last 13 games for a 17-2-2 record, 5-0-1 in the Bay League. Not perfect but perhaps the makings of a another championship team. The Sea Kings, who share first place with Hawthorne, resume league play at Rolling Hills at 3 p.m. Friday.

Bryant believes this year’s Palos Verdes team is just as dangerous as last year’s.

“Everybody goes after them,” he said. “They make everybody want to play better.”

Said Kay, the team’s leading scorer: “Last year we knew we were going all the way. We had a cocky team.”

They were so sure that they adopted “Coast-to-Coast” as their motto, meaning they would win every game. One of last year’s seniors, Lance Haworth, the 4-A Player of the Year, even drew a map of the United States on the chalkboard in the journalism classroom to track their progress through the season.

It was that brand of confidence that carried them to the title.

“(The motto) was “Back-to-Back” this year,” said Kay, “but it’s kind of screwed up now. We don’t have that cockiness and aggressiveness this year.

“I don’t think that at the beginning of the season anybody thought we could stand up to last season. But then when we won our first seven or eight games, we thought, ‘Well maybe we do have a chance to keep this thing going.’ Obviously we didn’t.

“I don’t think our coach or fans harbored any delusions that we would (go undefeated again). We knew it would be a new team, and to go that far you need experience.”

Last year’s team was deep in experience with 14 returning players. This season, the Sea Kings had only four players return, three of whom are starters: Kay, forward Pete Malishka, halfback Brandon De Mott and goalkeeper Mark Antrobius, who recorded his 10th shutout of the season Tuesday in a 5-0 win over Beverly Hills.

“As a coach, if you get one season (like last year) in a lifetime, you’d say you were very fortunate,” King said. “It was a dream year as a coach.”

Reality has the Sea Kings back to earth.0