Cal Lutheran Transfer Is Goal-Oriented : Norwegian Gives Added Kick to Soccer Team

Per Roald is conspicuous as he strides purposefully across the Cal Lutheran campus on his way to a class.

At 9 in the morning, he is the only young man with his shirt off.

“He says he’s working on a tan,” said Dan Kuntz, the school’s soccer coach. “When he goes back to Norway, he wants to be the only guy with a tan.”

Roald, 23, has three months to work on it. He is scheduled to return to his hometown of Ulsteinvik, on Norway’s west coast, for the holidays.

Along with the tan, he hopes to bring a trophy from his first American soccer season. An NCAA Division III championship will suffice.

Roald, a former member of the Norwegian national youth team, is expected to help Cal Lutheran challenge for the title. The Kingsmen won last year’s Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championship and were ranked as high as third in the nation.

This season, Cal Lutheran has most of its key players back--plus a very pleasant surprise.

Roald arrived in Thousand Oaks on Aug. 23 and Kuntz didn’t know he had enrolled in school.

“This is a small school and when the soccer players here see someone walking around who looks like they might play soccer, they ask,” Kuntz said. “That’s how I found out about him.”

Cal Lutheran’s new weapon did not stay a secret long. In the Kingsmen’s opener against Wheaton (Ill.) College on Sept. 4, Roald scored three goals in a 4-1 victory.

Two of the goals came on headers after Roald soared above a crowd of defenders. The other was launched by foot from 25 yards. The only three shots he took found the back of the net.

Roald scored another goal in Cal Lutheran’s second match, a 3-2 victory over Cal Poly Pomona. However, Cal State Dominguez Hills managed to hold him scoreless last Saturday in a 2-1 Cal Lutheran loss.

But not without a great deal of effort. Roald was shadowed by two defenders and, occasionally, was triple-teamed. He also came away battered and bruised, the result, he said, of a “rather dirty” match.

Kuntz expects Roald to face more of the same as his reputation grows.

“The college game can be pretty physical,” Kuntz said. “Some of these players are not as skilled as others and they rely on being physical to keep up.”

Said Roald: “I think I met some of those guys.”

Kuntz suspects that double- and triple-teaming Roald will not work consistently, either.

Aaron Muth, a double transfer from UCLA and Grand Canyon (Ariz.) University, is set to return to Cal Lutheran’s lineup next week after his sprained left ankle heals. Muth last season was the leading scorer in the NCAA Division II West Region.

Also capable of playing forward opposite Roald are Willie Ruiz, who was second on the team in both goals (nine) and assists (six) last season, and Jan Hammervold, a freshman from Trondheim, Norway.

“With Per, Willie and Aaron we have three guys who we can go to who are great scorers,” Kuntz said.

Hammervold becomes an additional threat when teamed with Roald because they can set up moves for each other by communicating in Norwegian.

“We might say something like, ‘You take a run there and I’ll tail it’ . . . and the defenders would not know,” Roald said.

Cal Lutheran has four Norwegian players on its roster. Thomas Johnsen a junior from Trondheim, and Preben Krohnstad, a midfielder from Bergen, are the others.

Roald is attending Cal Lutheran for a year to study business. In Norway, he is an engineering and business student at the Norwegian Institute of Technology.

Cal Lutheran became an option for Roald after he met Ernie Sandlin, then the school’s acting Dean of Admissions, during a seminar at the Norwegian university last year.

“I had always been interested in the U.S., and it sounded kind of interesting what he told,” Roald said. “They had a soccer team, and they had business classes I could take. There were other Norwegians and I got some pictures and it looked nice.”

Then, too, there was the prospect of warm weather. “Well, you know, it was California,” said Roald, who speaks fluent English. “It’s not like back in Norway with the weather. Back home I’d be wearing a sweater, or maybe a raincoat. We had only a few days of sun this whole summer.”

Roald has been in the United States 24 days. He says that in his first three weeks living in Thousand Oaks, he never saw a cloud.

“I saw my first one here yesterday,” Roald said early this week. “I’m used to them in Norway, but not here.”

The change in weather has prompted Roald to switch positions. A midfielder in Norway, Roald requested a move to forward on his first day of training with the Cal Lutheran team.

“I said, ‘So, you’re a midfielder,’ ” Kuntz recalled. “And he said, ‘Not here. It’s too hot to play midfield here. I can’t run that much.’ ”

Kuntz accommodated the request, and is glad he did.

“Per is a thank you from somewhere,” the coach said.