Splash Season Had a Little of Everything : Analysis: Team took some chances and reached a few goals. However, it did not get a league title.
The Splash’s inaugural Continental Indoor Soccer League season was a combination of good, bad and comical.
The good involved the team’s regular-season play and its increased attendance late in the season, which gave team administrators hope that they’ve really latched on to something.
The bad involved the Splash’s playoff performance, in which it was swept by Las Vegas in the CISL semifinals.
The comical involved the team’s accommodations for its first-round playoff series in Sacramento; players went to the hotel bar only to find themselves in the middle of the Transvestites Ball.
Most impressive was the team’s regular season, during which the Splash had the league’s second-best record, 20-8, despite starting from near-scratch. It was testimony to Coach George Fernandez, who was named the CISL coach of the year, and to co-Governor Tim Orchard’s ability to assemble a team.
Orchard had the team in place before he hired Fernandez--his college roommate from Cal State Hayward--on May 6, one month before the season began. Orchard provided plenty of skill players and enough depth to get the team through key injuries to midfielders Sam George (who missed 22 games) and Armando Valdivia (seven), as well as late-season suspensions.
The talent was obvious. Ralph Black, acquired in a trade with Portland, was named the league’s defender of the year. Black was a first-team All-CISL performer, midfielder Doug Neely was a second-team selection and forward Dale Ervine and midfielder Raffaele Ruotolo were on the honorable mention team. Paul McDonnell made the all-rookie team.
Clearly, the team is on the right track. And it appeared destined to reach the championship series, given some of its dramatic victories to win the home-field advantage through the first two rounds, such as the time it scored with a tenth of a second to complete a three-goal, fourth-quarter comeback.
“We played great right up to the first game (of the playoffs),” Fernandez said. “Then we hit the wall. And that’s shocking to me. It’s just nauseating.”
How nauseating? The Splash won only two of its five playoff games, as individual players tried to do too much rather than play selflessly. Four players scored 30 goals or more during the 28-game regular season; only one, Rod Castro, averaged a goal a game in the playoffs.
If the team did let down in the playoffs, it rallied at the box office.
The average attendance through the Splash’s first 11 home games--in which the team was 10-1--was 4,213. It then went 27 days in August without a home game. Upon returning, the team averaged 6,581, which would have been fourth-best in the league.
Attendance should be bolstered next year by more choice arena dates, which weren’t available this year because Ogden Facility Management--which owns the team and runs The Pond--never had the team’s front-office operations going until April.
Understandably, the front office is as optimistic about its off-field goals as it is about the team’s championship hopes next season.
“If we have the caliber of play we had this year, and I have nine months to promote the sport instead of 60 days, I don’t think a Friday or Saturday night with 10,000 in the stands is unrealistic,” General Manager Tim Ryan said. “For a family of four to come to a live, professional sporting event for as little as $16, I don’t see how we can go wrong next year.”
Already Ryan has seen the effects of the team’s play on ticket sales. Before Aug. 28--the Splash’s first game back from the seven-game trip--there were 318 season tickets sold between $72 and $140. Since then, 368 have been sold. Ryan’s goal is 1,200.
“We’re ahead of schedule,” he said.
Which is not unusual, given that this team went from being the most inept franchise in 1993 as the L.A. United, to being one of the league’s most respected--and best--in one year.
And that’s good.
