Even Hand Finally Tilts in Mistri’s Favor : Soccer: Cal State Fullerton coach has taken underfunded team to brink of the NCAA Final Four.

Let’s start with a story. It is 1985 and the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. men’s soccer ranks belong to a select few.

“It was very difficult to schedule,” said Al Mistri, Cal State Fullerton men’s soccer coach then and now. “Everyone wants you to come to their place. Nobody wants to come here. At a league meeting, I was one of only two coaches who said we should play home and away series with league opponents. It would force some guys to come to our place.

“Fresno State and Nevada Las Vegas were adamant against it. Immediately after that year, for whatever reason, we draw Fresno and UNLV at home. I said, ‘That’s why we should play home and away.’

“I left that meeting and I’ll never forget it. I said to them, ‘We’re going to be in the playoffs next year.”

It was the first year Mistri, through fund-raising, had scraped enough money together to play a decent schedule. Problem was, the Titans swung through Virginia and got blitzed by a few teams and, by the time the conference schedule started, they were 2-9-1.

But . . .

Playing conference powers UNLV and Fresno State at home, the Titans went 5-0 the rest of the way, won the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. championship and represented the conference at the NCAA tournament with a 7-9-1 record.

“Guess what happened at the next league meeting?” Mistri said. “They voted to play home and away games against each conference opponent.”

And that speaks volumes about Mistri.

All the man wants is an even hand.

“He’s the kind of guy whose personality fits him,” said Mel Franks, who, as Fullerton’s sports information director, has worked with Mistri since the soccer coach’s arrival in 1981. “He’s kind of jolly. Remember the comic strip ‘The Little King’? That’s who he reminds me of. A mustache, a rotund physique, always in a good mood.

“You can’t tell whether he won or lost after a soccer match. He shakes the other coach’s hand and walks off toward his office.”

Many times, the hand Mistri is shaking controls a budget much larger than Fullerton’s. Many times, the hand belongs to a coach who has a much nicer office than Mistri’s.

And it makes you wonder: What could Mistri accomplish if he did have an even hand?

On Saturday, in their first appearance in the NCAA quarterfinals, the Titans will play at the University of San Francisco. They are one victory from a trip to the soccer Final Four in North Carolina next week.

Their budget is roughly $7,500. They fund 3.1 full scholarships--only about 30% of the NCAA’s allotment of 9.9.

So Mistri works for this kind of moment all summer. He runs about 18 one-day camps during that time, barnstorming to scrape up every penny he can add to his budget, and all Titan soccer players are required to work at least two of them.

It used to be three but, with the addition of a Titan women’s team under Mistri this fall, the extra players allow Mistri to give the troops a break.

“The strategy with that is not just the obvious, to save money by not hiring extra help, but the best thing is the little kids get really attached to the big guys doing fancy things with the soccer ball,” Mistri said. “If you come to our games, you see these kids dragging their moms and dads to go see Coach Johnny.

“I always maintain people come and watch people, not soccer.”

So excuse Mistri if he feels this week as if his Titans deserve a break. It’s about time somebody bought him a round.

“Considering all the things that needed to be taken care of, all the things we had to do to get here, it seems like the proper thing that should happen,” he said, laughing, of the Titans’ performance in the NCAA tournament. “You want to say, ‘By God, we are doing these things on our own.’ But it’s a delicate balance.”

It is. With the California State University system swimming in red ink and universities dropping various sports programs, you have to be grateful for what you have.

“I think soccer deserves to be considered as one of the top programs at Fullerton and funded accordingly,” Mistri said. “My program is a very viable alternative.”

Maybe one day Mistri will see things equal out but, when you spend your life in soccer, you’re used to it the other way, too. He arrived in the United States in 1964 as an exchange student from Bologna, Italy. He returned to Italy after a year but, when things weren’t working out for him on the professional soccer field, he decided to come back to the United States and attend Cal Poly Pomona. He played soccer there, too.

“Those were primitive days,” he said. “You had to go to Mexico to find shoes. You couldn’t find soccer shoes here.”

After graduating from Cal Poly Pomona, he took a job at Damien High School in La Verne and worked there for 10 years before arriving at Fullerton in 1981.

He has been in the game long enough to know that one rule holds hard and fast: You give and give and give in soccer. You find your niche and do what you can.

“I’m still skeptical that this year, in 1994, despite the World Cup, that we’ll have a massive explosion where everyone watches soccer,” he said. “However, in my lifetime, I’ve gone from having to go to Tijuana to buy shoes to making a living at soccer.”

And this week, he’s gone from running just another under-funded program to storming the NCAA’s Elite Eight. He has conducted interviews every day this week and Saturday he takes his team further than any other Fullerton soccer team has gone.

“We’ve been really flattered,” Mistri said. “Some players have been interviewed this week . . . This is really nice. We have at least been noticed.

“Obviously, people on campus have taken a liking to us. People I never knew were on campus. The impression I get is that this is something we can rally behind.”

Sure. Everybody loves an underdog, and the Titans certainly qualify. Mistri is well aware Fullerton was the second choice of most of his players.

“With most of them, it’s ‘I always wanted to be a (UCLA) Bruin. It was a crushing blow when the Bruin coach didn’t want me,’ ” he said. “When that happens, kids this age think they are not worth anything.

“Then someway, somehow, they come to Fullerton. I’ve made a career out of convincing these guys they can do it. All of a sudden this past week, they’re further than they thought they would be.

“You just don’t know how much it means to these kids to know that everyone else cares.”

Maybe one day all things will be equal. But this week on the Titan practice field, you suspect that, in their hearts, for a few days at least, things already are.