Sisters Find Time to Play Soccer for Cypress

That the Van Herk sisters are playing soccer at Cypress College is nice, but it isn’t nearly as interesting as how it happened.

Consider the obstacles Tracy and Lori overcame to end up on the same field for Cypress, which opens Orange Empire Conference play at 3 p.m. today at home against Fullerton.

Tracy, who plays several positions, is a 1989 graduate of Kennedy High School and has been attending Cal State Fullerton since.

To play for Cypress, she is taking 13 units at the college. But she also has a class at Cal State Fullerton to keep her standing there.

She also works 25 to 30 hours a week for the Cerritos recreation department and maintains a grade-point average near A.

The end of the season in about two months will hardly bring a respite for Tracy, who then will be an assistant to her father, Bob, the Kennedy varsity girls’ soccer coach.

“I don’t have a lot of free time but soccer is fun,” Tracy, 20, said. “Our parents are happy we are playing together, but they always say you shouldn’t do it unless it’s fun.”

Lori, 18, is equally busy. She has 13 units at Cypress and three at Cal State Fullerton. She works around 20 hours a week at In-and-Out Burger and maintains a near-A grade-point average as well.

Lori, a forward, also had to deal with a knee injury sustained about two years ago that was so painful at times she couldn’t sleep.

She had surgery in summer of 1992 and has little trouble with the knee since.

“We’re a very active family,” Lori said. “It seems like we are always busy going to a soccer game or something. It’s always been like that.”

Tracy played four years of varsity soccer at Kennedy, where she graduated in 1989.

She considered playing college soccer, but among the few local colleges fielding women’s teams were UC Irvine and Cal State Dominguez Hills.

At that time, Cypress and Fullerton community colleges and Cal State Fullerton had not started women’s programs.

She said she was somewhat frustrated but filled her time going to college and working.

When Ray Haas launched the Cypress program, he recruited Tracy and she worked out with the team during the summer of 1992, but decided not to play when she became a full-time student at Cal State Fullerton.

Cypress went 16-2 and won the Orange Empire Conference last season.

“Now I wish I would have played,” she said. “Midway through the season, I went to Ray and told him I was going to play this year.”

What made the decision especially easy was that it gave her another chance to play alongside Lori.

“She regrets that she didn’t play last year--big time,” Lori said of Tracy.

When they were growing up, they played together on age-group teams, but had last been on the same team during the 1988-89 season at Kennedy.

Tracy is the oldest player on the team by a few months and endures being called “Grandma” by teammates, including her sister. But Tracy said she doesn’t mind the nickname and likes the leadership role she has on the team.

“She has a maturity that brings a lot of strength to the team,” Haas said.

Community College Notes

Several top teams in Southern California, including Irvine Valley’s No. 1 and Orange Coast’s No. 2 ranked women’s teams, will compete Friday at the Irvine Invitational. The women’s race starts at 2:30 p.m. and the men’s at 3:30 at Irvine Regional Park. In the rest of the women’s poll: Mt. San Antonio is third, Cuesta fourth, Ventura fifth, Antelope Valley sixth, Golden West seventh, Rancho Santiago eighth, Rio Hondo ninth and Glendale 10th. Mt. San Antonio is the top-ranked men’s team. Rancho Santiago second, El Camino third, Cuyamaca fourth, Antelope Valley fifth, Glendale sixth, Long Beach seventh, College of the Canyons eighth, College of the Desert ninth and Riverside 10th.

Palomar (4-0) remains the top-ranked team in the weekly Southland Poll. Mt. San Antonio (4-0) is second and Bakersfield (3-0) is third. Long Beach (4-0) is fourth, Cerritos (3-0-1) fifth, Los Angeles Valley (3-0) sixth, Saddleback (2-1) seventh, San Bernardino Valley (2-1) eighth, Moorpark (2-1) ninth and Golden West (2-1) 10th.