Her Aim is True : Bell’s Alma Viana Has Been Showing No Mercy to Opposing Goaltenders for the Past Two Years

“Let’s have a little contest,” I say to Alma Viana. “I’ll get in goal and you try to score.” Knowing that my masculinity is at risk, I take a deep breath and wait.

Bam! The first shot looks like it is coming right at me, and then all of a sudden, it takes a severe downturn, like it just dropped off a table.

I’m lucky to slap the muddy ball away as it leaves behind a sting.

The second shot is high and veers to the left at the last second. I barely get my fingertips on it and I’m saved by the post.

Getting the feeling that she is toying with me and that my luck may be running out, divine intervention and the top bar of the goal come through for me this time as the third shot ricochets off the beam.

I’ve still got a shutout, but now she’s mad.

“I have to score against you,” she shouts as she places the ball about 20 feet away from the net.

The next two shots, one to the right and the other left, come darting then veer away like a wicked slider in baseball, leaving me standing like a frozen rooster in the barnyard. Not a chance.

“All right, I think you’ve made your point,” I say as I humbly retrieve the ball.

Alma Viana has been making her point to opposing goaltenders with little mercy for the past two years.

The 17-year-old Bell High School junior scored 25 goals in only 11 matches last season--including five in one game against Jefferson.

This season, she already has 10 scores in just four games: hat tricks against Manual Arts and Fremont, and two goals apiece against Roosevelt and Jordan.

She has yet to play a full game this season because the Eagles have won by lopsided margins. Her coach, Norma Escobedo, does not want to risk having her star player get injured in one-sided matches.

“She is the best player I’ve ever had,” said Escobedo, who’s in her fifth year as coach.

Although Viana is a terror on the field, she does not look very imposing. Standing barely 5-foot-3, her shy smile belies the fact that there is a tiger within. But put a soccer ball at her feet and her eyes light up like Diego Maradona’s when he goes for the kill.

Although Maradona is her idol, credit must go to her father, Jose Luis, for getting his daughter started in soccer.

“When I was 5, my dad took me to the park with my brothers and so I just started playing. That’s where I learned my skills: playing with boys,” Viana said.

In fact, she didn’t play organized soccer until she was 16, when she joined AYSO (she once scored nine goals in a game).

Viana almost didn’t get the chance to play high school soccer.

“She was ineligible her freshman year. She just didn’t have the grades,” Escobedo said. “But she wanted to play so bad that she brought her grades up and gave it a second shot. She’s very smart. She was just lazy.”

Escobedo now has Viana thinking about continuing to a four-year university.

“I hope that I can get a scholarship,” Viana said.

Grades aren’t the only hardship Viana has had to overcome in her soccer quest. She has also had to endure chauvinism.

“The Latino community has accepted girls’ basketball and volleyball, but soccer is still considered a predominantly ‘male only’ sport,” Escobedo said.

All this presents is another barrier for Viana to smash.

“That’s not going to stop me. I love to play soccer,” Viana said. “I’ve heard that since I was 5, people saying, ‘Look at your legs, you’re going to look like one of the guys.’ My mom wanted me to stay home and clean and my father would say, ‘No, she is going with us to play soccer.’ ”

Now Viana cleans up on opposing defenses.

Bell has built a solid team around Viana and is a strong contender to win its first City Section title.

“We have six seniors and they really pass well and move the ball around to each other,” said Escobedo. Best friend and teammate Claudia Farfan agrees.

“Some of the girls see her talent and they get encouraged and they think, ‘Maybe I can try that.’ That is what helps,” Farfan said. “We see it is possible.”

With everyone on the team setting each other up, Bell has become a very tough squad to beat. The Eagles were 7-0-1 until they ran into a 6-0 defeat at the hands of Grant in the first round of the playoffs.

“They wouldn’t let me touch the ball,” said Viana.

Apparently, that is the only way to defense her.

“Girls will run alongside me and punch me in the ribs and kick me,” Viana said, “But I just keep on going with the ball.”

After she scored her third goal in the first half in a game earlier this season, the goalkeeper chased after her to start a fight.

“I pulled her after that,” Escobedo said, “I didn’t want her in any bad situations.”

Escobedo counts outstanding ball control as Viana’s greatest asset.

“I used to tell her to pass the ball around, but now I just say once you’re in the box just take it in, and she does,” Escobedo said.

Viana learned ball control and finishing her shots from Julio, the eldest of her three brothers. Julio plays club-level soccer, while her two other brothers, Jose Luis Jr. and Ever, compete at ocal playgrounds.

“I learned to dribble the ball by playing with my brothers. They get so mad they try everything to get the ball away from me,” Viana said, laughing. “They try to beat me up.”

She is also, obviously, a deadly left-footed finisher.

Last season, she beat Garfield on a nearly impossible shot.

“She was falling as she was being fouled and drove the ball into the opposite corner of the goal as the keeper just stood there,” Escobedo said.

Said Farfan: “When she is calm, she knows what she is doing and she helps the team a lot. But sometimes she gets really frustrated, and then she doesn’t play right. So I say, ‘Calm down, look at what you are doing.’ ”

“Coach Escobedo has helped me with my temper,” Viana said.

From the goalkeepers’ perspective, the last thing they would want to see is a calm Viana. A frustrated Viana is tough enough to stop.