Troubles Abound for Pro Soccer Team

Bobby Bruch, the 23-year-old in charge of community affairs for the Los Angeles Heat, was undaunted when only 19 youngsters showed up recently for a youth soccer camp in Torrance. The turnout was disappointing, but those connected with the Heat are used to disappointment.

Still, Bruch was optimistic.

“We’ve got to start slow and build,” said Bruch, who is also a forward for the struggling professional soccer franchise. “I get the feeling being in the community that the attitude about the team is getting better.”

On the field, the Heat is 7-7, considered mediocre for a franchise generally accepted as the most talented in the American Professional Soccer League West.

Off the field, there are deeper, more pressing problems. The Los Angeles Heat has no live radio, television or cable exposure, plays its games on a high school field, suffers from poor attendance and is awash in red ink.

Bruch, General Manager Jill Fracisco, 26, and part-owner John Ajemian, 31, are part of a youthful management team that hopes to rekindle the franchise, which was founded in 1986 by four South Bay businessmen.

“This is a test year,” Fracisco said. “Everything we do we have to look at and see how we can make it better.”

They also acknowledge that the Heat faces extinction if it is not turned around soon.

PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS

The Heat, which plays host to the San Francisco Blackhawks Sunday afternoon(cq7-22) at 4 at West Torrance High, has not turned a profit in five years. It lost $150,000 last year and is expected to lose even more this season because it signed several high-priced players in the last few weeks.

The club lacks some of the basic supplies needed to run a business day-to-day. Money is needed to upgrade personal computers and printers and to pay for receptionists and secretarial services. Sometimes ball girls answer telephones in the front office.

The Heat cannot afford to pay players full-time salaries, as some of the 10 other APSL clubs do. Many Heat players hold regular jobs or work part time in the youth camps. Los Angeles practices only twice a week, at night. Coach Bobby Sibbald sells hair products for a living.

League officials want the Heat to play at Murdock Stadium at El Camino College in Torrance, where it played its first year. The West High field is too small, Sibbald concedes, but it is more affordable.

Gate receipts have been dismal, although Fracisco said some cutting in other areas will probably help the club stay within its $400,000 operating budget, lean by professional standards. A series of 11 youth camps is expected to raise $20,000, but only if each attracts 50 kids. Still, Fracisco said she “refuses to skimp” on amenities for players or for visiting teams, which stay in a swank Torrance hotel at the Heat’s expense.

Trade-outs have offset other costs, yet some of them give the impression that the Heat is a team for hire. For instance, the players don’t wear their names on the back of home jerseys. Instead, the shirts bear the logo of a shoe manufacturer that supplied them free, along with shoes, as a promotion.

Explained another co-owner, Roland Martin: “My theory is to keep the costs low but pay the players more than the (semiprofessional) Greater L.A. Soccer League. If we keep it highly competitive on the field, then as the (attendance) numbers go up, we can grow slowly.”

Attendance is creeping upward, but not without faux paus. The largest crowd to watch a Heat game this year was 1,124 July 13. But a crowd of 1,100 July 1 was drawn by the promise of a fireworks display that was canceled at the last minute because Fracisco couldn’t get the approval of Torrance school officials for the show.

Other teams in the APSL have better followings. The Salt Lake City Sting, which receives regular clips on three network TV stations, drew nearly 10,000 fans to its opener in Salt Lake City in April. The last-place California Emperors have capitalized on the large Latino population in the Inland Empire, broadcasting games on a Spanish-language radio station. The Emperors drew 4,500 people to the University of Redlands for its home opener with the Heat.

Soccer ranks third in the United States in number of participants, but in the South Bay, the birthplace of the American Youth Soccer Organization, the Heat has found it difficult to attract fans. In a recent promotion, 800 mail-in coupons for free tickets were distributed near the pier at Redondo Beach. Only three were returned.

Said club President John Ajemian: “There are days when we just sit in the office, laugh and ask, ‘Why do we put ourselves through this?’ ”

THE IMAGE

“What is the Heat?”

It’s the most-asked question a beat writer has received this summer, next to “Who cares about soccer?”

The Heat is working hard to improve its image, but there are several major obstacles.

Location. The league insists that the team call itself the “Los Angeles Heat.” In reality, the club plays in Torrance, practices in Manhattan Beach, has its headquarters in Redondo Beach and would like to play some of its games in Orange County, which has a larger youth market. In fact, some of the owners have said they would like to move the team to South Orange County as early as next season, if attendance and revenues in the South Bay don’t improve. League officials appear split on such a move.

Exposure. There are nearly 90 radio stations in the Los Angeles market. None wanted to broadcast Heat games live. The Heat was upstaged when cable rights were negotiated last spring. It is a 15-minute drive to the offices of Prime Ticket from West Torrance High, but it is the Emperors in Redlands who can be seen on Prime Ticket. Fracisco wanted to show the team’s final four home games on tape delay on a Torrance cable company. But earlier this week she had yet to make a decision on the broadcast of Sunday’s game, saying that she was not sure the Heat could afford to pay for it

The Heat has advertised in advance of some of its games in local newspapers, including The Times, but the team’s advertising budget this year is only $30,000. A one-time, quarter-page advertisement in The Times that would run only in the Westside, the South Bay and Long Beach costs about $4,000, without contract discounts. The Heat plays a 10-game home schedule, which would require $40,000 for advertising in just one publication.

Newspapers, at first cool to the Heat, have stepped up coverage during the summer. The Times’ zoned edition and the Daily Breeze of Torrance have sent reporters to cover some games live. Last week Spanish-language television station KMEX showed up and filmed highlights of the Heat’s 2-1 loss to visiting Salt Lake City. The Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion, which has a tremendous soccer following, has also done some stories on the team, but with mixed results. After the Heat dropped its home opener, 1-0, to the Colorado Foxes, La Opinion charged that the Heat couldn’t defeat a handicapped team from El Salvador.

Stadium. Playing on a high school football field instead of in a stadium also tarnishes the team’s professional image. “Over the years, the L.A. Heat seemed that they had very steady increases in their attendance,” said APSL secretary Arthur Dixon. “But when they got away (from El Camino), they seemed to lose all their fan support.”

The cost of playing at El Camino is prohibitive, Heat officials say.

“I can run an entire season at West High for the cost of one game at El Camino,” Fracisco said. The team’s season opener at 12,000-seat Murdock Stadium on April 13 drew 500 fans and cost more than $12,000, she said.

Said co-owner Martin: “In smaller cities like Albuquerque, for example, they have nothing going on. They can draw six or seven thousand people to a game. But here in L.A., it is the most competitive market in the world.”

Fracisco agreed: “I love the atmosphere at El Camino, but, realistically, playing there is down the tubes. I’d rather play at West High (because it is inexpensive) rather than let this team (fail).”

Club owners have considered building their own stadium or leasing an existing one. Three sites have been mentioned: the old Aviation High School football field in Redondo Beach, a former warehouse site at Wilson Park in central Torrance and a sinkhole behind a fast-food restaurant next to Bishop Montgomery High School in west Torrance. But no formal proposals have been made to officials in either city.

Martin said settling the stadium issue is crucial to building attendance.

“Let’s face it,” he said. “Nobody will build a stadium for the Heat. (The owners) keep (the idea of building a stadium) around, but we just don’t know what to do about it.”

Audience. The American perception, according to a recent edition of the television news program “Nightline,” is that soccer games are boring. ESPN Senior Vice President Loren Matthews told The Times recently that “the sport suffers from the image of a very patient, low-scoring game where you go into a defensive shell with a 1-0 lead.”

Americans want scoring, Matthews said--lots of it. Heat management has tried, with little success, to give its fans what they want.

“We want to try to score more goals,” said Martin, who came up through AYSO ranks in Torrance. “That’s entertainment, scoring. That’s what we have to do to draw a crowd.”

Despite those attempts, which included signing several high-profile players, the Heat averages two goals a game and allows 1.7.

Said Ajemian, an Armenian who played soccer as a boy in Syria: “To Americans, the bigger the numbers, the better. . . . To attract a following, we need to come up with a gimmick (like more scoring).”

The league bases its standings on a combination of wins and numbers of goals scored. Ajemian would like the APSL to add a bonus system that pays players to score.

Identity. To try to get more goals, the management signed seven new players after the season began, meaning that Sibbald has played the same lineup only twice. Fans have trouble identifying with the team’s stars because whenever a new player has started, another player has been benched or released.

“If we are trying to get the money out of this community, then we better make heroes out of some of the local boys,” said another co-owner, Dave Graefe of Torrance. “The problem is, the faces keep changing out on the field, but the (uniform) numbers stay the same.”

THE OWNERS

No one is sure how many owners the Heat has, or has had over the past year. The best guess, Ajemian says, is six or eight. Some “owners” are people who have, at some time or another in the club’s history, paid some of its expenses. Some like to remain anonymous. Others, like Ajemian, who can be seen in the press box during games counting tickets, take an active interest.

“I’m in this because I love soccer,” said Ajemian, who works in a family-run business that includes a string of gasoline stations and real estate interests. “I’m not in it to make money. Anybody involved in soccer in this town has to expect that he won’t make a lot of money.”

The team is attempting to draw up legal documents that would divide ownership into percentages based on the amount of money each owner will pay each year. The process has been slowed, Fracisco said, because the lawyer working out the deal has spent the past six weeks at the World Cup in Italy. It could be completed in the next two weeks, with Ajemian and record-company president Lionel Conway getting 25% each.

The L.A. Heat Inc. was founded in 1986 by four South Bay men: Martin, Graefe, Mike Hogue and Eugene Schiappa, an Italian immigrant who owns the Pacific Coast Highway building in Redondo Beach where the Heat is headquartered. Each man put in $40,000, and the team joined the Western Soccer Alliance, the forerunner of the APSL West.

Ajemian bought into the Heat when he sold the California Kickers (now the Emperors). Ajemian purchased the Kickers, who played in the San Fernando Valley, in 1987 for $10,000. He sold the team for $20,000 and sank an estimated $40,000 into the Heat. The infusion attracted new partners, including Conway, who owns a semipro team that some Heat players play for in the off-season.

Ajemian, considered the most active of the owners, says all the owners agree on a go-slow approach in spending, although he has boosted the team’s budget by an estimated $250,000 this season. He would like to see the team break even in three years. Sponsoring youth summer camps will eventually pay off in increased attendance, he said, and that will boost revenues. He would also like to play several exhibition games in South Orange County, where he said the team can draw 2,500 people per game.

A few agree with Ajemian that a move to Orange County would be beneficial, but they differ on the location. Santa Ana, where a burgeoning Latino community has greater soccer awareness, is a possibility.

However, Schiappa would like to see the team stay put. “We will do whatever we need to get this team going,” he said. “It’s the best thing for the league.”

Graefe has been frustrated with some of the changes since the new owners moved in.

“This year we are spending more money, we have more people on the payroll, and I’m not sure we are doing any better,” he said.

THE FRONT OFFICE

A recent graduate of USC, 23-year-old Dawn Smith discovered quickly that her first full-time job, as Heat public relations director, requires her to wear a lot of hats. Hired last February, she answer phones, finds halftime shows, sets up promotions, takes reservations for youth camps, runs a shuttle service for visiting bigwigs and purchases advertising space, to name a few of her duties.

A Bay Area native, Fracisco, 26, is the only female executive in the APSL. She was hired as an assistant to then-General Manager Hogue. As a student at San Jose State, Fracisco had worked in promotions for the Oakland A’s, the Golden State Warriors and the Invaders of the defunct U.S. Football League.

Fracisco considers her forte to be preparing for and running game operations. She has been an assistant promoter for more than 30 international matches and has received two offers to work for soccer clubs abroad. Her dark hair and features have made her a favorite among the Spanish-language press, where she is known simply as “Geel.”

When Smith had the flu last month, she missed the team’s road trip to Portland, and a report of the game missed some of the morning newspapers. Because of budgetary considerations, she did not travel to San Jose last week, and the job of phoning newspapers with the results fell to Fracisco.

“We know that (in the front office) we do not have enough people,” Ajemian said, “but for this year it will have to do. Next year we hope to add one or two more people.”

The front-office staff seems to get along well with the players.

“I’ll tell you, in the years that I have been around, this is the best I’ve seen the Heat run,” said reserve goalie Marine Cano, who is also the soccer coach at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

For four previous years, Hogue was the Heat. He wrote press releases, purchased advertisements, answered phones in the office and was the game announcer. A promoter with some experience in putting together international soccer matches, Hogue was a one-man band who turned out to be quite good at managing what Graefe termed the “shoestring budget.”

Hogue, however, was an entrepreneur, a love-him-or-hate-him type of guy. Last fall he resigned rather than surrender his authority.

“There were going to be changes in management, and I was absolutely against the changes to be made, so it was easy for me to leave,” Hogue said.

Graefe was sorry to see Hogue leave, but he understood the need to enlarge the front office.

“Mike is the kind of guy who wants to run his own show, and sometimes there were conflicts. Mike did something that no one else had the guts to do: that is, put a team on the field and run it. . . . I told Mike that you can’t do everything, that you need people to help you. . . . He had to do some things he probably shouldn’t have been doing.”

Fracisco has been slow to make inroads in solving some of the Heat’s basic problems, like building attendance and getting a radio or cable TV contract. Part of that, suggested one owner who asked not to be named, may be due to her unfamiliarity with the Southern California market.

“Obviously, I’m still learning. I’m pretty young,” Fracisco said.

She hopes to gradually improve attendance by targeting people in their early 20s and late teens and tapping into corporations with ticket deals in exchange for advertising. She also wants to expand the team’s target area for spectators, perhaps north into the Westside and east into West Long Beach, where the burgeoning ethnic population has swelled soccer’s popularity in recreational leagues.

Fracisco has a delicate job of balancing the wants of all the active owners, estimated to be at least five. As the team struggles on the field and at the gate, several have become restless.

Fracisco, however, is not one to speak out unless challenged.

“The way we have been playing lately, we need a good chewing out, but I don’t see (Fracisco) doing that. I think that will be left up to one of the owners.” one player said.

Fracisco, who instituted a series of fines for violations of team rules, received a lukewarm reception from the players. As time went on, she seems to have earned respect through her attempts to boost the team’s image. One of her ideas was to have the team dress alike in slacks, shoes and shirts when it travels.

“I want the team to look good, to impress,” she said.

THE COACH

Bobby Sibbald’s No. 2 jersey from his days with the defunct L.A. Aztecs of the North American Soccer League is framed and hung on a wall of the cramped Heat office.

Born in England, Sibbald came to the United States in 1975 to play with the Aztecs and rapidly became a crowd pleaser. Schooled in the English style of long ball, he was an aggressive attacker who also had a keen sense of the game. Eventually, he was named the Aztec player-coach.

The NASL folded in 1984, and Sibbald stayed active in soccer as a coach at Redondo High and for a top club team, Torrance United.

Sibbald would like to see the APSL go to a split season, playing the first half in the spring and the second in the fall. He said that would make it easier to draw crowds from youth organizations, which play a September-to-December schedule.

His biggest complaint about American soccer players is their “lack of professionalism--that is, their ability to know how to win a game and how not to lose a game.”

Sibbald would also like to see the APSL experiment with a system to liberalize scoring opportunities--perhaps by adjusting the off-side call, which kills many breakaway attempts.

“Realistically, FIFA (the international governing body of soccer) should look at that, too,” he said.

Sibbald is well respected by the players. Said forward Dale Ervine: “Bobby is somebody who has played the game and still stayed involved with it in a positive way. He has played it at its highest level. People like to learn from someone who has been at the highest level.”

Sibbald agrees that the Heat has the best talent in the league. He blames the league’s scoring system, which bases standings largely on the number of goals scored, for holding the team back.

“I keep telling my guys that we have to win,” he said. “Well, we won three straight, and I see we are dropping in the standings because we have not scored enough goals.”

THE PLAYERS

It’s difficult to put a finger on exactly what the Heat is missing on the field, yet team members appear to play as individuals without a team concept. That fact hasn’t gone unnoticed by other players in the league.

California Emperor goalie Chris Wilson of Torrance, who shut out the Heat twice in regulation play, only to lose both times in overtime, said: “I could just tell, by the things that they were saying to each other on the field . . . that they don’t know their roles, are not willing to give (their all) and don’t care to give.”

“We’ve just got a bunch of guys who are out there to collect their paychecks. They don’t know how to play like a team,” said a Heat player who asked not to be identified.

Ervine wouldn’t go that far: “We have the kind of players that can shine as individuals, but maybe we are trying to shine as individuals all the time, instead of playing like a team.”

Entering tonight’s game, the Heat was in third place in the APSL West Southern Division.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Sibbald. “I’m going gray. I don’t know what it is. We’ve got the players. I thought we’d be blowing people away.”

Injuries, over-spirited play and big egos have played major roles.

In the first 10 games, Sibbald had to use a different starting lineup each time. In addition, he said, “red cards are killing us.”

One red card (ejection) or a combination of yellow cards (cautions) in consecutive games means that a player is required to sit out the next game. On July 1 against first-place Real Santa Barbara, for example, two starters missed the game. The Heat won on penalty kicks, but only after a lethargic performance that necessitated two goals in the final two minutes to send the game into overtime.

Another reason the Heat is making Sibbald gray may be that most of the players have been signed to contracts that last only through the end of the season. For example, Mike Getchell, Dale Ervine and Jim Gabarra are expected to return to indoor soccer in the fall. The indoor game offers much more lucrative contracts.

Publicly, management wants to promote its players. Privately, it complains that many players have not learned the responsibilities that come with being professional athletes.

“We are not very flashy, but we need to be stylish. We need to build heroes, no matter who they are. But for some of them it is very hard to deal with the media. They’re not used to talking,” Fracisco said.

Soccer is a spirited game, but from the bleachers, some of the finger-pointing and shouting among Heat players has left the indelible impression of a team in turmoil.

In one confrontation, reserve Steve Sharp got in a shoving match with Sibbald on the field in front of the Heat bench during a game. Sharp was later released and is now with the San Diego Nomads.

THE LEAGUE

In the magazine Soccer International, Chairman Clive Toye of the APSL’s eastern division described the APSL as “professional with a lowercase p.”

That the APSL would even exist as little as a year ago points out that the coming World Cup is already having an impact in the United States. As part of its contract with FIFA to receive the cup, the U.S. Soccer Federation agreed to create a professional soccer league in this country before 1993. But the USSF has been slow to act.

Seizing the opportunity to get a head start on the USSF, the American Soccer League and the Western Soccer League merged to form the APSL last February. The two semiprofessional leagues, with a total of 22 teams, agreed to upgrade salaries and play for a national championship in Boston on Sept. 22.

Differences need to be worked out before the merger is complete. The American Soccer League had little or no restriction on the number of foreign players per team. The Western Soccer League (now the APSL West) allows only two. Because of travel costs, teams will play only within their own divisions this year. Toye told Soccer International that he doesn’t expect interdivisional play next year, either.

The league’s wacky scoring system--which gives teams extra points for the number of goals they score--has come under scrutiny. Trying to encourage more offense, the league may have only confused the public. Through the first week of July, for example, Arizona (5-8) was atop the Southern Division standings, followed by Real Santa Barbara (7-4) and the Heat (7-5). The reason: Arizona had scored more goals than either the Heat or Santa Barbara.

Still, Sage and Dixon say, league attendance is up through the first half of the season. They say they have taken the lead in providing what FIFA demanded and the USSF has not delivered--a professional soccer league.

“Where is the plan, and why doesn’t the USSF implement it now? They just can’t wait until the last minute,” Ajemian said.

Werner Fricker, president of the USSF, has steadfastly refused to recognize the APSL--a stand that has angered league members, according to Fracisco.

Fricker, who is up for reelection, has proposed a professional league of three to five divisions, each containing eight teams. Fricker said existing teams would be eligible to apply for some of the spots, but it seems unlikely that all the APSL teams would qualify, because Fricker plans to restrict the regions of the country where professional soccer could be played.

Theoretically, any existing franchise in the Los Angeles market would be coveted by the USSF, because of possible fees for television rights. In addition, it is generally acknowledged that Los Angeles will host either a semifinal or a final game of the 1994 World Cup at the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl.

Those prospects seem to put the Heat in a good position if it can hang on. But other teams in less-populated areas, such as Albuquerque or Salt Lake City, may not be as fortunate.

So far, the APSL has received some attention from the U.S. media, both good and bad. Soccer International said the merger leaves “new hope for the eventual return of a fully functional national league.” But a headline last month in The National said: “U.S. pro soccer: Barely alive and kicking.”

Sibbald disputed that claim, pointing out that the Western Soccer League has been in operation since 1986, when it called itself the Western Soccer Alliance.

“A lot of people didn’t think the league would be here (that long),” he said. “But it is, and that will tell you something about the people involved in it.”

THE FUTURE

The year 1994 will be pivotal for the Heat and professional soccer in general. That’s when the World Cup will be held in the United States, and many experts say it will be the make-or-break year for soccer’s reputation in this country.

Said Heat co-owner Martin: “If soccer doesn’t go here by 1994, then it is never going to go in the United States. We might as well just give up the idea of professional soccer and let it exist on a recreational level.”

Sibbald said he has waited two decades for the United States to build a viable international soccer program. Instead, it has spun its wheels.

“Ten years ago I thought the United States would dominate the world of soccer by this time,” he said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

Already there are storm clouds on the horizon. NBC has said it will not bid for the rights to broadcast World Cup games here, and representatives of ABC and CBS have speculated that they, too, will drop out of the bidding. The three TV networks reach 98% of the people in the United States.

Three cable networks have shown an interest, but cable reaches only 51% of the neighborhoods in the country. Without full national exposure for the World Cup, soccer alliances such as the APSL may discover that it will not generate a lot of fan support.

That prospect is chilling to some.

“If the World Cup doesn’t create interest in soccer here,” said Ajemian, “then nothing will.”

And that means that the Heat would be turned off for good.