High School or Club? : Soccer: Some think that this is one activity in which staying in school is not the best thing.

Ever see a college scout at a Pop Warner game? How about a Little League game?

Foolish, huh?

Well, yes, but if the question posed were have you ever seen a college scout at a youth soccer game? , it wouldn’t be foolish at all.

“Ninety percent of college scholarships go to club soccer players,” said Tom Evans, coach of both the San Diego Sun, a Southbay-based club team, and at Hilltop High. “There’s too little coaching at the high school level and not enough top-line competition. If you scout a high school game, you’re not going to see the youngster compete against the level of competition he would if he were playing club soccer.”

George Logan, former coach at San Diego State, and now at Cuyamaca College and Valhalla High, concurred.

“Obviously, the best players play club,” he said.

Because San Diego has become such a hotbed for youth soccer (try 75,000 players), the club system here has become rather powerful, so powerful that it sees high school, the traditional supplier of athletes to colleges, as a disruption of sorts.

There are approximately 50 club teams here, and the top ones such as the La Jolla Nomads, the San Diego Sun and San Diego Villa have internationally renowned coaches guiding their players.

Their goal is to develop players who will not only go on to make state, regional and national teams, but who will also be able to hold their own on the same field with Europeans and Latin Americans.

One problem. The clubs are forced to take a three-month hiatus each year while their players participate in the high school season. What’s worse, these coaches and their players say, is that playing for high school varsities often is a digression. It is to risk injury and allows skills to collect rust.

To some club coaches, this presents a minor ill. To others, it is a malignant growth which should be alleviated.

When the San Diego Sun first started in 1986, its founder, Mike Semels, wanted to keep his players away from high school, believing that making a year-round commitment to a club team might some day payoff with a spot on a national team, a much loftier ideal then going for a Section championship with one’s neighborhood friends.

Semels, who has since left the Sun, was not the only area coach to pit club soccer against high school soccer.

The dilemma was never more apparent than during 1987-88 high school season, when several Nomads players decided to skip their high school season and continue training under the tutelage of Derek Armstrong, a British transplant with a bounty of international experience.

Although the Nomad players are dispersed throughout the county, indeed throughout Southern California, most come from the La Jolla area. Thus, the schools hit hardest were La Jolla High and University City High, two perennial powerhouses.

Donaldo Viana coaches at University City and was expecting to repeat as 2-A Section champion when the “boycott” hit. When nine of the players who performed for the Nomads decided to stay away, the Centurions lost all hope of capturing a second consecutive Section title.

But later, when the high school season ended and the club season resumed, players wished they hadn’t stayed away from their high school teams.

“Students don’t get to repeat high school,” Viana pointed out. “Playing for their school is a question of pride, and besides, it puts them in the limelight.”

Jerzy Szyndlar, currently the coach of both San Diego Villa and Mesa College, was coaching at La Jolla High in 1987-88. He too lost several players who later said they made a bad decision.

“When players exchanged opinions, they regretted not playing--especially the seniors, because it was their last year,” Szyndlar said. “High school is part of the culture and I think they should play both high school and club.”

Jason Keyes, who now plays with Villa and is also on scholarship at Stanford, played four years at Serra High and was a member of the under-19 Nomads that skipped the high school season two years ago. Keyes, however, chose to play high school soccer.

“I just wanted to be involved with my high school,” Keyes said. “I wanted as much opportunity to play the sport as possible.”

Keyes touched on what is considered the lone benefit of high school soccer. It affords players to either practice or play every weekday, compared to the two or, at most, three practices club teams offer each week.

“You always hear club coaches complain about high school players,” Szyndlar said. “They complain that players will get bad habits, that the game is too physical. And that’s true, but the American player doesn’t play enough and high school soccer gives them a chance to play every day.”

And as Viana of University City pointed out, practicing alongside lesser-skilled players is not necessarily destructive. The drills are the same for both.

“The passing skill, for example, is a basic skill, but something that must be done over and over again to get it down,” Viana explained. “The best World Cup teams, the Brazilians, the Argentines, etc.--they all go down to the very basics as if to start from the beginning.”

Viana’s point is that high school coaches do indeed go back to the very beginning because the lesser-skilled players need the repetition--and so too do the club players.

But wouldn’t a club player get more out of such drills under a more demanding club coach and alongside the county’s elite players?

That is the big debate.

“High school drops the level of a good player,” said Toby Taitano of both Valhalla High and the Sun. “It brings him down to the high school players’ level and that’s not good for the club player.

“In club soccer, you know you can give the ball to one of your teammates and you can trust him to control it. In high school, it’s more like 22 players kicking at the ball.”

Added Szyndlar of Villa, “What actually happens with some of the club players is they become frustrated.”

Of course there is much about high school soccer to spur frustration--like goon tactics.

In high school, a widely used defensive tactic is slide-tackling from behind, an illegal and dangerous move. When four legs get tangled, knee and ankle joints are prone to stretch and snap.

“I can’t remember any particular instances,” said Keyes, the former Serra player now at Stanford. “But I got hacked all over the place in high school soccer. It happened a lot.”

“It’s almost as if you get football hits,” said Taitano. “People just come in and clock you. That’s not fun. That’s the downside of high school soccer.”

“I’ve heard of people actually being football-tackled in a game,” said Mark Foster, a sophomore at Mira Mesa High who last year gained all-Section honors as a freshman and who also plays for Villa.

Players and coaches agree that high school soccer is by nature a rougher game then club soccer because the talent, and thus the finesse, is spread so thin. But there is another contributing factor--coaching.

“A lot of the high school coaches are not looking for the skilled players,” Keyes said. “But instead look for players that impress them--the big players, the football players, the fast athletes.”

All of this--the lack of expert coaches, the physical play, the watered-down skill level--have led club coaches to search for a way to bridge the high school season. So far, the Nomads are the only club to have tried to do just that, though their decision to skip the high school season collapsed after just one year.

Now Szyndlar is positing another solution--for club coaches to work side by side with their high school counterparts.

“High school soccer doesn’t pay any attention to club soccer,” Szyndlar said. “We need to develop cooperation between club and high school coaches. This would be to the benefit of the kids and the transition (back to club) would be much easier.”

Szyndlar, who used to coach at La Jolla High, does not see egos getting in the way of such a relationship.

“What I do is go to high school games and talk to my players before the game,” Szyndlar said. “I don’t have any problem with cooperation from high school coaches. Unfortunately, what happens is they change very, very often.”

In fact, there was more than a one-third turnover of high school coaches between last season and the ongoing one. Of the 61 schools which field boys varsities, 23 have new coaches this season.