Both Barrels Firing : Gerardo, Wolleck Put Simi Valley on Target for Title

It wasn’t a strong recipe for success: The Simi Valley High girls’ soccer team lost seven starters and would have to base its traditionally strong defense in part on a rookie goalie and a fullback with a rebuilt knee. Midfielder Monica Gerardo was a known commodity, but who in the world was going to score?

That’s how Coach Mark Johnson was feeling in November, on the eve of an uncertain season.

Two months later, Johnson has a powerhouse on his hands and a pair of productive scorers who have led Simi Valley to a 20-3-2 record, a Marmonte League championship and the No. 3 ranking in the Southern Section Division I coaches’ poll.

One of those scorers is Gerardo, a senior who changed positions to give the team more firepower. The other is sophomore Anna Wolleck, whose rapid improvement and tandem play with Gerardo have allowed the duo to carry the Pioneers’ offensive load.

“In the system we play, you only have two offensive players up front and they better be good because they’re going against four defenders,” said Johnson, whose team clinched a league championship and an automatic Southern Section playoff berth by finishing first in the rain-shortened season.

“With Monica being such a skilled player, she needed someone to complement her, and that was Anna Wolleck, because she’s very, very fast.”

Royal Coach Andy Silva, whose team has tied and lost to Simi Valley this season, said he tells his defenders to do their best in slowing Gerardo and Wolleck but concedes there are times when even the best-designed defense comes up short.

“We try to get our best defenders in a one-on-one situation with them and try to get in their way,” Silva said. “But they know that every once in a while they’re going to break free.”

And when they do, the ball-control wizard and the rocketeer have had few problems putting the ball in the net. Gerardo, a second-team All-Southern-Section pick last season, has 32 goals this season and 87 in her four years.

Wolleck, whose scoring touch was a question mark, has 12 goals.

Gerardo has spent the past two seasons gently advising and encouraging Wolleck, who tends to become disheartened when she fails to live up to her own high expectations.

“She puts a lot of pressure on herself to do better,” Gerardo said of Wolleck. “But she’s very determined. If she sees a loose ball she gives everything she has to go get it, and she doesn’t care what the consequences are. She’ll knock someone over to create a play.”

After a freshman season in which Wolleck said she often wanted to get rid of the ball the minute she got it, she has settled down and begun to use the lessons she learned--many of them from Gerardo.

“The hardest thing for any striker to learn is to be patient when they get the ball,” said Johnson, who stresses the quality of shots, not quantity. “If you’re going 100 miles an hour, you can’t get a quick shot off, and Anna has learned to beat players with speed, then slow it down and take goalkeepers one-on-one. I attribute that to Monica.”

Though Wolleck has begun to come into her own, few would argue that it is Gerardo who has carried the team and will be instrumental if the Pioneers win their second Southern Section title.

Gerardo, a powerful 5 foot 6, has played soccer for 13 years and signed a letter of intent Wednesday to play at Notre Dame in the fall. She won an under-18 national championship with her club team, the Fountain Valley Spirit, last spring and was a member of the under-17 U.S. national team in 1992-93.

“Monica has the best absolute skill of any player we’ve had at Simi Valley High, bar none,” said Johnson, who has sent a number of players on to Division I college soccer teams. “She has a perspective of the game that most players don’t and she is totally calm on the field. When Monica shoots from inside the penalty box, seven out of 10 times she’s going to score.”

And when Gerardo begins to shift into high gear, even her teammates are inclined to slow down and gawk.

“Sometimes I’ll stand there shouting ‘Monica, man on you!’ and then freeze,” Wolleck said. “She’s so good at controlling the ball that you don’t expect her passes sometimes. It’s kind of like you’re watching her on TV.”

Midfielder Jennifer Olson, in her third year of playing with Gerardo, said the team has come to rely not only on her physical skills but her emotional guidance.

“She’s been able to get through every defense we’ve played; teams mark her really tightly but she always gets by them somehow,” Olson said. “The whole team follows Monica. If she’s serious, the whole team is serious. She’s a true leader, and if she says something the team knows it has to go that way.”

Though their styles and confidence levels contrast sharply, Gerardo and Wolleck share the distinction of being the only two players in Johnson’s 14-year tenure at Simi Valley to have spent their entire freshman seasons playing at the varsity level.

In addition to being a program with a wealth of juniors and seniors, he Pioneers rarely feature freshmen because Simi Valley High is a 10th-through-12th grade school. Ninth-graders who want to play on the varsity face an uphill battle because they aren’t on campus to participate in Johnson’s conditioning class, and they aren’t a part of the social and academic worlds of their older teammates. A final barrier is that freshmen aren’t allowed to practice or play at Simi Valley until 10 days before the first game.

Such a daunting venture made even the confident Gerardo uptight. It practically pushed the high-strung Wolleck over the edge.

“I didn’t want to practice with (the varsity) because I thought they wouldn’t accept me,” said Wolleck, who spent three days on the junior varsity before being promoted. “Everyone was so much older and I didn’t even know their names. I felt like every time I did something wrong they’d notice, like a light was shining down on me. I got shaky and kind of sick.”

Gerardo knew exactly how Wolleck felt.

“I was really scared and everyone tried to make me feel comfortable, but I still had that nervousness,” Gerardo said of her freshman year. “You’re worried that something bad will happen and that you might get sent back down.”

It’s been a long time since Gerardo or Wolleck worried about their place on the team, and their performance this season has taken a load off Johnson’s mind. He said many team members were expecting a mediocre season and merely hoping for a repeat of last season’s third-place Marmonte League finish.

“I thought we’d have to start all over again and I give a lot of credit to Mo,” he said. “You’d figure that in 14 years, sooner or later you’re going to have a couple of down years, (where) you’re going to be an average team.”

Not with above-average strikers.