Prep Wednesday : Getting Fat on Feeder Programs : Youth sports: High school coaches aren’t permitted to set up such systems, but that doesn’t mean farm teams aren’t supplying a steady stream of players.

During the late 1970s and early ‘80s, when Edison High School football seemed to rival Angel baseball in media attention and fan support, Bill Workman knew the program would have a steady stream of young players.

“If you asked a kid of 10, 11 or 12 in those days, “What do you want to do you when you grow up?’ he would say, ‘I want to play football for Edison High School,’ ” said Workman, then Edison’s coach.

It was the kind of loyalty that helped the Chargers win 32 consecutive games and two Southern Section titles between 1979 and ’81. The enthusiasm was tapped by a strong youth football program in the area.

Edison Athletic Director Lyman Clower estimates that 80% of Edison’s players had played tackle football in the Huntington Beach Junior All-American program, which used the school’s athletic fields for practices and games.

Workman, now the head coach at Orange Coast College, recognized the value of being associated with a strong youth program.

“The fact that they practiced on our campus, and we put on clinics for their coaches, and in many cases they borrowed what we were doing at the high school, certainly didn’t hurt us,” Workman said.

“A lot of those kids had almost run our system by the time they got to high school.”

It might be the not-so-secret dream of many a high school coach. Just think of it:

As soon as the seniors play out their eligibility, you dive into the wellspring of talent for replacements, already trained and disciplined. A farm system, if you will.

But rules governing high school sports prohibit such a system. Setting up a feeder program would be a violation of the section’s “undue influence” rule, which limits contact between coaches and students who have yet to enroll in high school.

“The problem with that is the high school team is supposed to be the school team--a team made up of students from your school--not something you build,” said Scott Cathcart, director of media relations for the Southern Section.

But the rules do permit those not associated with a school to organize teams that often become de facto farm systems. If a high school team is successful for a prolonged period, chances are it is being fed by a strong youth program.

Examples abound.

--The Mission Viejo girls’ swim team, which won 11 consecutive section titles from 1976 to 1986, was stocked by the Mission Viejo Nadadores, an internationally renowned club.

--Brea-Olinda, which has won three section and two state girls’ basketball championships in the past three years, gets virtually all its players from Brea Junior High, which has a successful traveling all-star team.

--South Coast League girls’ soccer teams, which have reached the section Division 4-A title game in each of the past seven seasons, are well supplied by the Mission Viejo Soccer Club, which has won two national championships in the past six years.

These are only the most notable successes. Any area with a base of involved parents probably has some sort of youth sports system.

Most club programs weren’t created to bolster high school teams. The purpose is to give children a competitive outlet. Helping a high school team is only a collateral effect.

Ken James, president of the Huntington Beach Pop Warner program, said Pop Warner has given his 10-year-old son, Chris, the chance to play and learn tackle football before he would have otherwise. James believes that Chris, who started Pop Warner at 7, will have an advantage if he choses to continue playing in high school. If not, then he will have experienced football at a level in which there are fewer injuries.

“By the time he plays in his first freshman game, he’ll have seven to eight years experience already,” James said. “And that just can’t but help better prepare an athlete for the high school level.”

During its heyday, the youth football played at Edison, which in 1986 changed its affiliation from Junior All-American to Pop Warner, had two teams at each of five levels. But as indicated by Edison’s enrollment plunge from a high of 4,500 to the current 1,875, fewer children now live in the area, and there is only one Pop Warner team per level.

There have been recent signs of renewal, however. Participation is up about 30% for the season that ends in November, and almost 200 children are playing. About 70% will attend Edison, 20% Huntington Beach High, and 10% Fountain Valley, estimates Tom Swegles, who coaches the Huntington Beach Broncos, a team of 11- to 14-year-olds.

In past years, Edison Coach Dave White has given clinics for Pop Warner coaches, but he doesn’t regularly have contact with the program other than cooperating to make the school’s athletic fields available. He does, however, recognize that Edison has benefitted.

“They wear the Edison colors, go to the Edison games and dream of wearing the lightning bolts on their pants and their helmets,” White said. “It’s just part of the rich tradition of the school.”

At the same time that school enrollment was plunging in Huntington Beach, it was beginning to take off in the southern part of Orange County, and the powerful youth sports organizations that developed ensured strong high school teams.

There might be no better example than in soccer. Since 1977, when the first American Youth Soccer Organization league was created, soccer has become the No. 1 sport in Mission Viejo in terms of participation. About 4,000 children--more than 5% of the city’s total population--are involved in one of the AYSO’s 270 teams or one of the city’s two club programs.

The sheer numbers have given high schools in and around Mission Viejo decided advantages, but high schools coaches say the benefits come from quality more than quantity.

“It makes my job immeasurably easier because the kids come in with skills and I can teach them tactics,” said Kerry Krause, who coached the El Toro girls’ team to its second consecutive Division 4-A title last season. “If you don’t have to spend time instructing everybody that a soccer ball doesn’t have corners on it, it makes your job that much easier.”

The area’s ascendance in high school soccer is most notable among the girls’ teams of the South Coast League, especially Capistrano Valley, Mission Viejo, El Toro and Dana Hills. Since 1986, a team from the league has won or shared the 4-A title. In 1990, two South Coast teams played for the championship.

“In every case, the preponderance of the kids were from the Mission Viejo Soccer Club,” said Nick Xiros, a past president of the club who currently coaches an under-15 team.

When the club was created in 1978, the founders agreed it was most important to provide quality coaching, so they decided that the coaches would be certified by the U.S. Soccer Federation.

“The quality coaching is the key,” said Jim Hutchinson, founding coach of the Soccerettes, the first Mission Viejo team to win a national title. “Instead of having a dad or mom who is a nice person but has no idea what to do, we have quality coaches.”

Many of the Soccerettes attended Mission Viejo High, which won three consecutive 4-A titles and went 84 games without losing during one span. One member of those teams was Julie Foudy, now a junior at Stanford and a member of the U.S. national team. She was named 4-A offensive player of the year three times.

Unlike the Mission Viejo club soccer program, Brea’s Polcats girls’ basketball team is affiliated with the school district--the players come only from Brea Junior High--and therefore the flow of players to Brea-Olinda High is more direct.

Last season, each of the players on the state champion varsity and junior varsity teams were former Polcats.

The Polcats, coached by history teacher Jon Joslin and Lt. Bill Lentini of the Brea Police Department, have a 137-17 record since their inception in 1980. In addition, they have a 53-7 record against high school junior varsity teams they play in summer leagues, and have a mystique of their own.

“When we play against a high school (junior varsity) team, they’re excited to play us,” Lentini said. “They’re really excited if they can stay in the game, and if they beat us, they’re elated because they feel like they’ve beaten Brea in some way.”

Lentini and Joslin hold a six-week basketball camp for players in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades each November and December, from which they pick an all-star team that plays a season of tournament and single games against various opponents.

Many of the Polcats’ games are against AAU all-star teams, which provide strong competition that prepares the players for high school play.

Brea-Olinda Coach Mark Trakh, who also teaches a basketball class at the junior high, gives so much credit to Joslin and Lentini that he put both their names on the state championship banners hanging in the school’s gymnasium.

“It perpetuates itself, and it’s very, very valuable, and the people that do it don’t get paid at all,” Trakh said. “We definitely would not be as strong as we are if it weren’t for the Polcats and the work those guys do down there.”

“They get (the players) interested at the right age, and I reap the benefits of their hard work.”

THE FEET THAT FEED THEM

Since 1985, South Coast League schools have been a dominant force in Southern Section Division 4-A girls’ soccer. They owe much of their success to players from the Mission Viejo Soccer Club, a nationally successful program that was founded in 1978.

Mission Viejo Soccer Club: Dana Hills High: 1990 runner-up Capistrano Valley High: 1989 champion El Toro High: 1985 runner-up

1990 champion

1991 champion

Mission Viejo High School: 1986 co-champion

1987 champion

1988 champion