‘Nightmare’ Soccer Games Haunting Concordia Goalie Huerta
Every time Concordia goalkeeper Eddie Huerta takes the field for the Eagles men’s soccer team, the pressure starts mounting.
This isn’t your typical performance anxiety--Huerta is a supremely confident sort--but he fears that any goal he allows will cost his team a chance for victory.
Or even a tie.
In 14 games this season, Concordia has scored three goals, and, therefore, the Eagles are 0-14. Huerta has allowed 40 goals, which puts him at the bottom of the Golden State Athletic Conference goalie rankings. At the same time, Huerta has 142 saves, the most of any goalie in the conference.
Obviously, he takes a lot of shots.
“It looms over your head,” Huerta said. “Is this the game where you’re going to get shelled? Is this the game where you’re going to miss everything by inches?”
Huerta has suffered a couple of these “nightmare” games this season--6-0 losses to Cal Baptist and Southern California College.
Mostly, he repels most everything kicked his way. But it’s not enough to bring the Eagles any victories.
“We’re kind of like the Washington Generals playing the Harlem Globetrotters,” Huerta said. “We’re going to be in the game but nine times out of 10 we don’t have enough to win.
“It kind of wears on you a bit when you know you played a good game and you’re trying your hardest, but it’s really to no avail. After the game the opposing coach says you played a great game, my coach says I played a great game but tomorrow it’s still a loss.”
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Don’t get Huerta wrong, however. He’s grateful for the chance to be able to play soccer while he earns his degree. This is his fourth year at the school, and he expects to graduate this spring with a liberal arts major.
After this season, he plans to try out with a professional indoor soccer team and continue playing with his club team, the Orange County Vanguards. He would like a career in teaching and coaching, perhaps on an American Indian reservation.
He lives in Tustin with his wife, Paulette, and their 21-month-old daughter, Alexes. Paulette works full time. Eddie has a full course load, is paid by the university for driving the team van to away games and coaches the goalies at several youth club teams.
It’s not easy, but it’s a lot better than the life he led after graduating from Alta Loma High School in 1988.
Huerta had been a promising goalie for Alta Loma. As a junior, he was considered one of the top two keepers in the Olympic Development Program’s Southern California region.
But he got into drinking and “hanging around with the wrong people. I started eating the fruits of my success a little early,” he said.
His game deteriorated and his dreams of an opportunity to play in college, much less a college scholarship, evaporated.
His parents eventually kicked him out of the house and he lived for a year in a friend’s garage, working at a gas station to make ends meet.
Huerta finally got a break when he tried out for and made an Orange County-based semi-professional club team, the Seahorses (since renamed the Vanguards). One of the players on the team was Ed Brown, who was coaching at Christ College Irvine (since renamed Concordia).
Brown suggested that Huerta apply to the school. He did and was accepted.
“My parents were just stoked about that. That’s when they let me back in the house,” Huerta said.
Four seasons later with his life in order, Huerta hopes to get into a position to help others.
“I didn’t have anybody back then as a coach or mentor to say, ‘You have potential, don’t blow it,’ ” he said. “I want to be that coach.”
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Genevie Wright, a junior middle blocker on the Southern California College women’s volleyball team, was named the GSAC player of the week after helping the Vanguards to victories over Fresno Pacific and Azusa Pacific. Wright had 26 kills, eight digs, six blocks and five aces in the matches.
