L.A. UNIVERSITY BEAT / WENDY WITHERSPOON : Women’s Soccer Moves Toward Greater Heights

Four pioneers stood on this barren land last season, dropped a ball on the untilled fields and began to play.

And slowly, as they stamped and clawed at the earth, they watched a sport grow.

Women’s soccer has flowered in the Southland.

USC, UCLA, Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount, each in its second season in NCAA Division I, have shouldered the weight that goes with cultivating new programs. It might take awhile for any of them to reach the level of perennial powerhouse North Carolina, but they are well on their way toward being competitive.

“The fishery is a little bit fuller this year,” said George Kuntz, Pepperdine’s coach. “There are a lot more players in this program. A lot of the Los Angeles schools and women’s programs, in general, have increased the level of play.”

The four local teams are all operating on shoestrings, spreading four or five scholarships among many players. The best, fully-funded women’s soccer programs offer 11 scholarships.

And the local teams are young.

But they are overcoming these obstacles and improving quickly.

USC (4-1-1) already has twice the number of victories it had last season, when it was 2-15-2. The Trojans have scored 16 goals, compared to 24 all of last season.

“This I consider our first year, because last year I was thrown in with a club program,” USC Coach Karen Stanley said. “It’s completely different. There’s not even a comparison.”

Stanley got 12 recruits to help fill out her roster this season.

“A lot of the players who came here, I think one of their reasons for choosing it was because we were a new program and they knew they would play,” she said.

That’s the reason most of the players have chosen to play at the local schools. It tends to make for eager, tenacious teams.

For instance, Pepperdine held ninth-ranked St. Mary’s to a 2-2 tie last Sunday. Or, as Kuntz likes to say, “They tied us.”

Making it all the more remarkable, Pepperdine (2-1-2) was without all three goalkeepers because of injury, so Kuntz used Sita Rampershad, a freshman defender, in goal.

Likewise, UCLA and Loyola Marymount also have challenged ranked opponents. UCLA (4-1-1) held No. 19 Washington State to a scoreless tie last Thursday in the first round of the New Mexico tournament, which the Bruins won. Loyola Marymount (1-3-1) defeated No. 14 Santa Clara this month, 1-0.

Clearly, women’s soccer has dug in its cleats in the Southland.

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Looking for a cultural melting pot? No need to go to New York, there’s one right here, at USC.

Consider part of the roster for the Trojan water polo team: Hrvoje Cizmic, Split, Croatia; Marko Zagar Zagreb, Croatia; Uzi Hadar, Kibbutz Giv’atayim, Israel; Ivan Hurtado, Madrid, Spain; Alfred Van Dorp, Leusden, the Netherlands.

Each of the players took different routes to USC, which plays host to UCLA on Saturday at 4 p.m.

“We didn’t actually go out and recruit foreign players,” said Coach John Williams. “(They) kind of came to us in an indirect manner.”

Indirectly, via air mail.

Notes

Jim Toring, one of two college water polo players who played with the U.S. national team at the World Championships in Rome this month, has returned to UCLA for his sophomore season. Toring had considerable playing time as a reserve at the World Championships, in which he scored eight goals in six games to help the United States to a sixth-place finish. Even without Toring, UCLA (7-2) is off to its best start since 1991 and finished fourth at the Southern California tournament. Toring attended his first UCLA practice of the season on Monday and played in his first game Tuesday, scoring twice in a 19-5 victory over Long Beach State. . . . Natalie Williams, a former UCLA two-sport star whose college career was cut short in March when she suffered a knee injury, had her first practice with the U.S. national women’s volleyball team in San Diego on Monday. Williams was an All-American in volleyball and basketball. She was finishing her final season of eligibility when she tore her anterior cruciate ligament during a basketball game at Stanford. . . . The UCLA women’s softball team suffered a loss when Kirk Walker, seven-year assistant, took a head coaching position at Oregon State this month. For Sue Enquist, UCLA co-coach, the parting is bittersweet: “Both (co-coach Sharron Backus) and I are really excited that he finally has the opportunity to prove to Division I softball what he is capable of doing,” Enquist said. “Kirk has been such a great help to our program because he was such a hard worker.”