Connelly Comes to USC’s Aid

Christmas came in summer this year at USC when Patrick Connelly was hired as cross-country coach.

Connelly is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department and a longtime running coach in the Southland. He has taken USC’s neglected program and set it on a course toward respectability.

For the school’s track program, this is like a long-awaited gift. USC has never been considered a powerhouse in the distance events.

The Trojan men have not won a Pacific 10 Conference cross-country championship since 1958, when its top runner was Max Truex, who won conference and NCAA individual titles in 1957. The women’s program, which began in 1986, has always been the Pac-10 doormat.

But at Saturday’s conference championship meet at Palo Alto, the Trojans will have a clearly defined goal. While Connelly says the Trojans are “a year away from moving out of the cellar,” they will try to run an average of three minutes faster than they did last year.

If they succeed, much of the credit should go to Connelly.

“The first thing in coaching is people skills,” Connelly said. “I think you have to be that sales person who is able to instill that feeling of pride and that feeling of setting a goal and attempting to achieve it.”

Connelly has been coaching in Southern California for 38 years. He coached at five Southland high schools, winning numerous league championships, before coaching cross-country last season at UCLA.

In addition, every Saturday morning, Connelly is in charge of training about 1,700 runners, ages 17-70, for next year’s Los Angeles Marathon, for which he is the official Commissioner of Athletes. More than 90% of the runners Connelly trained for this year’s marathon finished the race, which is 14% higher than the overall percentage.

Connelly also has used running to steer potentially troubled youths away from gangs and drugs. In 1983, he was a pioneering member of D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). He started running programs in conjunction with D.A.R.E as a way to improve adolescents’ self-esteem.

“You look at a kid that doesn’t have any direction, you look at a kid that doesn’t have any avenues of success and then you put them on a track and you nurture each step and that just gets bigger and bigger and then they are on their own,” Connelly said.

Likewise, at USC, Connelly has instilled hope in runners who previously had none.

Mariam Bennett, a freshman from Blair High, is studious and was painfully shy when she first went to USC. Her high school coach encouraged her to try out for the cross-country team. But former coach Joe Arrazola, she said, discouraged her.

Then, Connelly took over. After two weeks of practice, Bennett went to Connelly with tears in her eyes, saying that she did not think she was good enough to be on the team.

Hang in there, Connelly told her. Currently, Bennett is challenging for the No. 3 spot, behind Treasure Schultz and Christine Lewis, two freshmen scholarship runners around whom Connelly will build the program.

“He just really knows what he’s doing,” Bennett said.

Bennett’s newfound confidence as a runner spilled into other areas of her life.

“She was like a little flower,” Connelly said. “The petals were closed up and then she started to open. Her mother says she can see it at home.”

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Sean Henderson is only one of the reasons that the UCLA men’s soccer team has emerged as a contender for the national championship.

The sixth-ranked Bruins (14-2) have five players who have scored at least five goals.

Henderson, a junior midfielder and one of three Bruin captains, has seven goals and eight assists, second on the team behind sophomore forward Ante Razov, who has eight goals and eight assists.

But it is Henderson’s leadership that is so important to the Bruins. Henderson has gained a certain maturity as a player in recent years. This maturity is partly because of experience and partly because in 1990, he finally was separated--at least on the field--from his older brother, Chris, a member of the U.S. national team.

Most of his life, Henderson played in Chris’ shadow. Growing up in Everett, Wash., the boys both played for Cascade High and for the North County United club team. Sean followed Chris to UCLA and, in 1990, played as a backup to his older brother.

When Chris left UCLA in 1990 to play for the national team, Sean, who had emulated Chris all his life, began to develop a style of his own.

“He is much more aware of his strengths now,” Coach Sigi Schmid said.

Unlike Chris, who is a quick, flashy player and an excellent dribbler, Sean has a good shot from distance and is an excellent header.

While the two are different on the field, off the field, they are carbon copies and good friends.

Said Sean, who seems to be making his own bid for the national team: “I definitely miss him off the field, but hopefully, we’ll be able to play on the field again--soon.”

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Chris Snitko, the Bruins’ junior goalkeeper who had not played a minute before this season, has been impressive.

He leads the West Coast and is tied for fourth nationally with a goals-against average of 0.47. He set a school record with nine consecutive shutouts and put together a stretch of 876 minutes without giving up a goal.

The Bruin defense deserves much of the credit for Snitko’s statistics because it has kept opponents out of shooting range. Snitko has 33 saves.

“The most difficult thing for a goalkeeper is to play behind a defense that is good,” Schmid said. “You have nothing to do for a long time and then all of a sudden you are called upon to make a key save.”

Notes

UCLA’s men’s soccer team will play host to the UCLA/Adidas MetLife Classic Friday and Sunday. UCLA will play seventh-ranked Rutgers (13-2-1) Sunday at 2 p.m. at the North Soccer Field. . . . UCLA, which has clinched the Pacific Division of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, also will play host to the federation men’s soccer championship Nov. 5 and Nov 7. The winner receives an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. . . . The Pepperdine women’s soccer team saw its seven-match winning streak broken when it lost Saturday to San Francisco, 3-0.