Slowly, but Surely, He’s Starting to Fit in at El Modena : Soccer: Playing the game is helping Tsipkis, a native of Moldova, make the transition to American life.

Igor “Greg” Tsipkis flipped through his English/Russian dictionary, looking for the proper translation. It wasn’t an important matter, but he wanted to get it right.

” Base, “ he said. “Army base.”

Small steps, but sure ones.

It’s been nearly a year since Tsipkis and his family left Moldova, formerly a republic of the Soviet Union that borders Romania. His English has improved in that time, but he still grasps for the correct phrases. It makes each day a struggle at El Modena High School.

But when the bell rings at 1:30 p.m. and the awkwardness leaves him, Tsipkis, a junior, heads out to the soccer field for practice. Pass and move. Cut and shoot. A language in which he is fluent.

“Soccer has made it easier for me,” Tsipkis said. “I made a lot of friends here because of soccer. On the field, they understand me and I understand them.”

With this familiar foothold, Tsipkis adjusts and assimilates. His life has changed drastically--much for the better--but he still has soccer to cling to.

His family, 11 in all, came here to escape the ethnic violence and racism of Moldova. They were caught in the middle of an ancient dispute over a region that has a tug-of-war between Romania and Russia.

Tsipkis is relieved to be far from the strife, but he was lost his first day at school until soccer practice.

Coach Jim Schultz, who also teaches classes in English as a second language, placed Tsipkis on the team to help him adapt. The bonus was Tsipkis turned out to be an excellent player.

“Our assistant coach plays on a club soccer team, so he runs this one-on-one drill with new players,” Schultz said. “Greg took the ball away from him. No one else has been able to do that.”

Tsipkis played in the final three games for the Vanguards last season. He moved into a starting spot at forward this season and has two goals and five assists.

In a game against Santiago, he contributed on all the Vanguards’ goals, scoring one and assisting on two others.

“In Russia, the game is more technical,” Tsipkis said. “You have to pass very quickly. Pass and move to the middle. They play good soccer here, but it’s more physical.”

Said Schultz: “He’ll get knocked down and nothing will get called. He’ll look at the referee like, “What happened.’ It’s just a different style than he’s used to.”

Tsipkis began playing soccer when he was 7 in Kishine, the capital of Moldova. His ability was apparent from the start and he was accepted into a special school for athletes.

He hoped some day to play for Spartak , a professional team in Moscow, but his world changed when the world did.

The breakup of the Soviet Union led to instability in many of the new republics and Moldova was no exception.

Moldova has traded flags many times. First Romania, then Russia, then Romania and then the Soviet Union, when Josef Stalin annexed the territory in 1940. Old wounds run deep.

The ethnic tension is such that the name was changed from the Russian ‘Moldavia’ to the Romanian ‘Moldova’ in 1990. There has also been a movement to rejoin Romania.

Tsipkis, whose family speaks Russian, said it was not safe for them to be on the streets at night.

“We never had any bad problems, but it was always there,” Tsipkis said. “The fighting was getting worse. There was a city about 20 miles from us that was destroyed.”

Tsipkis, whose family is Jewish, said the problems have escalated in the past two years. His family lived in a large apartment building and everyone who was Jewish had their doors marked.

“Life over there is very bad,” said his aunt Anna Gershkovich, who moved here in 1979. “You have no food. You have no clothes. But the biggest problem is the violence. Our family is Jewish and the whole country is anti-Jewish.”

Tsipkis said his father and mother, Leo and Tanya, also faced the prospect of losing their jobs in a purge of ethnic Russians. Leo Tsipkis was an engineer for Aerflot , the Soviet Union’s airline. His mother was an accountant.

“When the economy is bad, people have to blame someone,” Gershkovich said. “They were forcing out anyone who was Russian. It was a matter of time before they would have to leave.”

Gershkovich, who owns a jewelry store with her husband, waded through paper work and red tape for two years to bring her brother’s family to the United States.

“I didn’t want to leave at first,” Tsipkis said. “I was born in Moldavia and my friends were in Moldavia. But it was impossible to stay.”

Life here has been a different kind of struggle. Tsipkis has gone to great lengths to assimilate, to the point of using “Greg” as his first name because it is more American.

Tsipkis lives with his parents and grandparents. His sister, her husband and family live in Yorba Linda.

The language barrier has been a problem. Neither his father nor mother work because they do not speak English. His father is studying appliance repair and his mother is studying accounting.

All are taking English classes.

“If you don’t know the language here, you can’t do anything,” Tsipkis said. “It makes it hard. I’ve been lucky because of soccer. I wouldn’t have made so many friends so fast.”

He already made two by the second period of his first day of school. Jason Martinez and Matt Young, both soccer players, approached him and asked if he played.

“His aunt had called to tell me Greg played soccer,” Schultz said. “So I sent a couple of players to meet him.”

The conversation was short, but informative.

Said Tsipkis: “They said, ‘Do you play soccer?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ They said, ‘Are you any good?’ I said, “Yeah.’ They said, ‘OK, see you at practice.’ ”

Schultz and the team have made a point of looking after Tsipkis, even making sure he was eating right. Tsipkis, who weighs 160, has put on 15 pounds in the past year.

“Coach Schultz and the team have been wonderful,” Gershkovich said. “I don’t think Greg was very happy when he first got here. He’s very unemotional, so it’s hard to tell. But I could see he was a lot happier once he started playing soccer.”

Things haven’t been perfect, though. El Modena had only one student who could speak Russian and he was of Romanian descent. Tsipkis, who speaks Romanian as well as Russian, still felt the sting of his experiences in Moldova.

“The kid told me Greg refused to speak anything but Russian to him,” Schultz said. “It was like a point of honor. The differences of that part of the world go back a long time.”

But Tsipkis is attempting to put that part of his life behind him. He works on his English constantly and watches television to improve--sports, sitcoms and game shows. His aunt, a teacher in Russia, would prefer he read more.

He receives letters from friends in Moldova, which makes him a little home sick. The reality, though, is always there to remind him.

“If I stay there, I would have no future,” Tsipkis said. “My parents told me that here, it’s all up to me. But I have to study and study and study my English. How else can I get a . . . “

Tsipkis flipped through the dictionary one more time, just to make sure.

” . . . job? “

Another small, but steady step.