CAL STATE FULLERTON NOTEBOOK : Little Brother Gains Upper Foot in Soccer

Big brothers traditionally beat up on little brothers, but when it comes to college soccer and the George family of Mission Viejo, 20-year-old Sam George has gotten the best of 22-year-old Steve.

Sam is a junior midfielder at UCLA, and Steve is a senior forward at Cal State Fullerton. Their teams have met twice in the past two years, with Sam’s Bruins defeating Steve’s Titans in both games.

About all Steve has to show for the sibling rivalry is the broken nose he suffered in last season’s 2-0 UCLA victory.

But Steve will have one final chance for redemption Sunday when the Titans play at UCLA.

“It could help my bragging rights for the rest of my life if we beat them,” said Steve George, Fullerton’s second-leading scorer with four goals and two assists. “The brother rivalry has been pretty heavy. This is my last year and I’d like to go out on top.”

That will be difficult. UCLA is 13-1-3 and ranked third in the nation, whereas unranked Fullerton has struggled to a 5-7-3 record. Steve hopes the underdog role works to the Titans’ advantage.

“Sam is usually a lot more nervous because his team has everything to lose,” he said. “We have nothing to lose. We can make our season and spoil theirs.”

As a midfielder, Sam won’t be specifically assigned to mark Fullerton forwards, but he’ll probably guard Steve at times. When they’ve matched up in the past, there has been no brotherly love lost between the two former Mater Dei High School standouts.

“There’s not a lot of friendship when they play each other,” Titan Coach Al Mistri said. “It’s not a vicious thing, but they go at it.”

Fullerton soccer players believed they would challenge Fresno State for the Big West Conference championship this season, but the Titans have slipped to fourth place with a 3-4-1 record.

Barring a complete collapse by first-place Fresno State (5-1) and second-place UC Santa Barbara (5-2), Fullerton is out of title contention.

“I thought we had one of the best teams Fullerton has ever had, but the results haven’t been good,” Steve George said. “It seems we play well against the good teams, but we don’t get fired up for the weak teams. If we did, we’d probably be nationally ranked.”

Indeed, Fullerton has defeated UCSB and Nevada Las Vegas once this season. The Gauchos and Rebels are ahead of the Titans in the standings. But last Friday, Fullerton lost to UC Irvine, 2-1. Irvine is 5-11-2, 1-5-1 in the conference.

“That loss set us back significantly,” said Mistri, whose Titans also lost to UCSB, 2-0, on Sunday. “We’ve played some excellent ball this season, but we’ve had a combination of bad breaks and crucial mistakes.”

Fullerton, which is led by Raul Haro’s six goals and three assists, lost starting fullback Noah Kooiman (leg injury) in the second game, and his replacement, Todd Patrick, missed five games because of an ankle injury.

Augie Garrido’s back . . . is killing him. Garrido, who returned as Fullerton’s baseball coach after three seasons at Illinois, is suffering from a sciatic nerve condition in his lower back and has missed more than a week of practice.

He received several cortisone shots to relieve the pain Thursday and hopes to return to practice some time this week. The Titans open the 10-game fall season Thursday at Chaffey College.

Garrido said Sunday that some of the pain has subsided since the injections, and he’s sleeping more than the two or three hours a night he slept before the shots. But life B.C. (before cortisone) was pretty unbearable.

In Garrido’s absence, Titan assistant George Horton, the former Cerritos College coach who was a finalist for the head coaching job, has been conducting workouts.

It took Garrido more than 10 years to build the baseball field on campus, but within a matter of days last week, Titan Field was reduced to rubble. The demolition is to make way for construction of the Titan Sports Complex, which will include a new baseball field.

Garrido, however, felt no sentimental pangs at the sight of his creation being destroyed.

“It wasn’t really sad because it’s being done in the name of progress,” he said. “The old field isn’t something you wanted to hold on to. Now if they can build the new one as fast as they tore down the old, we’d be in business.”

Titan Notes

Fullerton quarterback Paul Schulte completed 27 of 47 passes for 254 yards in Saturday night’s 45-21 loss to Hawaii, bringing his season total to 1,719 yards. That places him sixth on the Titans’ all-time, single-season passing list, and Schulte is on a pace to finish second behind Dan Speltz’s 2,671 yards in 1989. . . . J.J. Celestine caught six passes for 58 yards and now has 38 receptions for 595 yards on the season, moving him to eighth on the single-season reception yardage list. . . . The Titan men’s and women’s cross-country teams will travel to Fresno this weekend to compete in the Big West Conference Championships, which will be held Saturday beginning at 9 a.m. at Woodward Park. . . . Freshman outside hitter Becky Howlett has been named Big West Conference volleyball player of the week. In three matches, two of them victories over Utah State, Howlett had 60 kills, a .344 hitting percentage and 10 blocks. She now has 434 kills, the second highest total in school history behind Susan Herman’s record 517 in 1988.