Soccer Coaches Would Travel for Better Matches

Days after Belmont girls’ soccer Coach Neal La Sala forfeited a game to Grant because his team trailed, 5-0, in the first 15 minutes, discussion over the organization of City Section girls’ soccer has increased.

Among local players, coaches and administrators, sentiment is strongly in favor of restructuring the current conference alignments so mismatches between established programs and their weaker opponents will not occur as frequently.

“I really don’t like playing against these kinds of teams but it’s been like this for the last two years,” said Grant’s Nicole Bucciarelli, who scored four goals against Belmont. “I usually don’t play the last half of each game. I wish they would change the leagues so we could get some competition.”

The solution many are pushing for is to group teams by talent and experience rather than by geography, as is currently done. Lukewarm support has also surfaced for the institution of a mercy rule when there are large deficits late in a game.

There are currently 28 girls’ soccer teams in the City Section, which instituted the sport for the 1988-89 season. Since then, new teams have been added nearly every year, including seven this season, and leagues and conferences have been restructured several times.

This season, more than in the past, teams are lumped lumped together based primarily on location, which has heightened the contrast between weaker and stronger teams and forced them to play each other twice a season.

City Section Commissioner Barbara Fiege presided over the set-up of the current system and said she and an advisory committee of soccer coaches will re-evaluate it after this season. Fiege said she is sympathetic to the plight of weaker teams, but avoiding long road trips was a primary goal when the teams were redistributed.

“There is a line of demarcation in skill between programs but when we restructured (the leagues), geography was a bigger concern than putting all the good teams together,” Fiege said last week. “Girls’ soccer is a rapidly growing program and in trying to keep up with the new teams and schedules we’re not going to get everything right.”

Reseda Coach Yidnekatchew Hailu, whose team is in its first season of play, is convinced the Regents have no business competing with established programs.

“I’ll travel to Morocco to play someone like us,” said Hailu, whose team is 0-10 and has scored only two goals in the West Valley Conference, which includes experienced teams such as Chatsworth, El Camino Real and Granada Hills. “You can’t build a system with such polarity between the teams that are playing each other.”

El Camino Real Coach Phil Yanov agrees.

“I would like to see a change and I would not mind riding a little farther to balance the leagues,” he said. “To have Chatsworth, Granada Hills and us in the same league is tough. Monroe, Kennedy, Reseda, their programs are just in the developmental stage and they need time and patience.”

Others are against reconfiguration, and say that in sports, as in life, one must accept the valleys as well as the peaks.

“Sometimes you get your butt kicked and you have to learn to live with it,” said Cleveland Athletic Director Everett Macy, whose Cavaliers lost, 10-0, to Chatsworth last month. “You develop natural rivalries playing local competition rather than busing all over the city. I’ve been around 30 years and seen teams go up and down.”

But for now, emotions often run high when a team gets steamrolled, and several City Section coaches say they will not let their teams win by more than 10 or 11 goals.

“When a team is blown out 8-0 in soccer it’s like 70-0 in football,” said Marshall Coach Rolland Brous.

Chatsworth, the City champion from 1989-93, has a 10-goal victory over Cleveland and a 9-0 rout against Monroe as its biggest blowouts. El Camino waltzed past Reseda, 10-0, for its largest margin of victory.

Grant, a team loaded with top-notch players, has only four reserves and has caused the most commotion. The Lancers, who have had six coaches in six seasons, infuriated observers throughout the section by burying a first-year Manual Arts team, 23-0, in 1992-93. They stirred up resentment again this season with a 19-1 victory over Sherman Oaks CES and the aborted Belmont match.

Fourth-year Garfield Coach Tom Hutton voiced support for La Sala, who was reprimanded by Belmont officials for the forfeit.

“I think it’s good what Neal did,” Hutton said. “Because it draws attention to a problem that’s existed for years.”

La Sala said he and his team have been told by Ignacio Garcia, Belmont’s assistant principal, that they will play the full 80 minutes in a rematch against Grant on Tuesday. Grant Coach Wilber Quintanilla said his team will go all-out from the opening whistle.

“We’re a team that is getting mentally prepared for the playoffs and we’re not changing a thing,” Quintanilla said. “Our concern is not to humiliate people but we need to work on going strong to the ball.”

Playoff preparation aside, some coaches and administrators maintain that in the current system, coaches bear the final responsibility for limiting big victories.

“It’s corny to say it, but you meet the same people coming down as you did going up,” said Yanov. “There might be a time in El Camino’s future when we’re not as good as we are now and you have to treat the other team with fairness and respect as individuals.”

How do teams wind up so far apart in talent and experience?

Many of the better city players and teams come from areas with strong American Youth Soccer Organization programs. . Weaker teams often have many members with no previous soccer experience.

Coaching stability often plays a role as well, with Chatsworth’s Jack Sidwell in his sixth season and El Camino Real’s Yanov in his third.

Whatever the cause, City soccer is becoming less of an attraction for many players, including Belmont captain Eldy Palencia.

“The point of playing is to have fun, but our self-esteem as a team went down (after the Grant game),” she said.

“After practicing for so many months we felt we couldn’t compete. It’s very upsetting to play a team you know you have no chance to beat.”

Meanwhile, Chatsworth’s Melinda George sees nothing good about playing teams with little or no chance of beating the Chancellors.

“Our motivation has gone down over the course of the season,” George said.

“In the (Holiday tournament) games it was still high, but now we play the same teams and beat them 9-0, there’s so little to work for.”