Splash Planning for the Long Haul : Indoor soccer: Team not willing to settle for just making the playoffs. It wants a title.
“This is just a little step. Last year we were here at the same time.”
--Raffaele Ruotolo, after the Splash won the Southern Division title
Doug Neely was talking to a reporter before the Splash’s penultimate regular-season game, and the question of still having a chance to win a Southern Division title was broached.
“Our goals,” Neely said, “are to win a championship and win a division title.”
Note the order.
You can win one without the other, and last year, the Splash did. They ran away with the Western Division title with a 20-8 record, then got swept in the second round of the playoffs. Including the playoffs, they lost five of their final nine.
But this year’s Splash team didn’t wrap up the division title early. With only eight games remaining, the Splash wouldn’t even have qualified for the Continental Indoor Soccer League playoffs, which meant it wasn’t in first or second place in one of the three divisions, and at 10-10, it didn’t have one of the two next-best records.
It was four games out of first place with eight to play, and fans hung banners--”Eight games and counting; bye bye George”--voicing their discontent with Coach George Fernandez.
All of which makes the Splash’s journey to Friday’s first-round playoff opener against San Diego at The Pond even more improbable. The Splash (17-11) enter as the CISL’s third-seeded team, the division champion by virtue of holding tie-breaker advantages over San Diego and Mexico, which finished in a three-way tie.
Since Aug. 28, no team has won more than the Splash during its 7-1 dash toward the finish. During that span, it has averaged 7.5 goals while allowing an astonishingly low 5.5.
The flash point to this turnaround was a players-only meeting in which the air was cleared, a commitment to team defense was made and the playoffs were no longer taken for granted.
The team averaged only 5.6 goals in its previous 11 games--since the exile of leading scorer Dale Ervine, who was eventually traded to Arizona--while allowing 6.3. With Ervine, the Splash was 6-3 and averaged 7.3 goals and allowed six. Without him, they were 4-7.
“When I started believing we could go all the way was when there were 18 individuals sitting here [at the meeting] and we looked at each other, and we could see the caliber of players we had,” Ruotolo said. “[Tim Orchard, player personnel director, and Coach George Fernandez] put a hell of a team together.”
And that team--the one that has since adjusted to each other after the 11-game transition period--is as hot as brimstone.
“We’ve grown accustomed to each other,” defender Sean Bowers said.
Since the beginning of the season, the Splash has added Bernie Lilavois, Paul Agyeman and Bowers (who missed the first four games when he got married). Three others, Jose Vasquez, John O’Brien and Ruben Fernandez, played substantially more as the season wore on.
“There were a lot of factors [for the midseason slump],” George Fernandez said. “Injuries, the Dale situation, new players coming in. It took a lot longer than I expected, but I understand now that it’s nothing you can turn on and off.”
Fernandez never wavered in his confidence in his team, often saying it could win a championship. And now it gets its chance despite looking horrible at times in the first 20 games.
Goalkeeper Ruben Fernandez, a backup last year, has responded brilliantly since the meeting. He lowered his goals-against average to a CISL-record 5.23 over the final eight games.
He gives credit to those in front of him--starting with forwards Lilavois, Vasquez and Rod Castro and working back--with doing their part, too. A team that couldn’t put together three good games in a row has now put together eight straight. And those final eight games, players will say, represent a truer picture of this team than the one that was inconsistent the first two thirds of the season. George Fernandez can best describe it by contrasting it with the one that started 6-3 with Ervine as its point man.
“We were a team that played through Dale--we relied on him way too much and it took everyone else out of the game,” Fernandez said. “It was always, ‘Wait to see what Dale does,’ and everyone else just stood around. Now that he’s not there, we’re a team that has to look for everybody to help. It has broadened us, made our team more whole; instead of relying on one guy, we’re relying on all five of them out there.”
Bowers, named Tuesday to the second-team All-CISL squad, agreed.
“I don’t think we have a superstar on this team; we have 18 stars on the team, and that’s what it comes down to,” he said. “But when it comes to push and shove, there are four or five of us veterans who have to step up, and we have done that.
“That’s why we are where we are.”
Splash Notes
In addition to defender Sean Bowers (18 goals, 19 assists, 63 blocks) being named CISL player of the week, teammate Jose Vasquez, who had four goals and an assist, was also considered. . . . Splash defender John O’Brien was named to the all-rookie second team. O’Brien had three goals, four assists and 11 blocks in 20 games.
