SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CAREERS / BALANCING WORK AND FAMILY : Coaching No Game for Parents : They say rewards justify personal sacrifices as they develop closer bonds with their children.

Melvy Murguia screams, collapses to her knees, then bounces back to her feet with a nervous smile of relief.

The Green Hornets, a youth soccer team whose players include Murguia’s 11-year-old son, Justin, have just dodged disaster as an opponent’s shot slipped past the Hornet goalie but caromed off the goal post.

Murguia, soccer coach and single working mom, will spend nearly every Saturday this fall cheering on the Hornets. She’ll also spend one night a week at soccer practice, leading Justin and his dozen teammates through drills and exercises.

In her spare time, Murguia is busy taking Justin and his 9-year-old sister, Meghan, to school or piano lessons, working in her job as an employment recruiter, and attending classes in Latin American studies and world literature four nights a week at UCLA. Plus doing her own homework.

Finding time, says Murguia, a longtime soccer fan who played in high school, is all a matter of setting priorities. The two hours she spends at games or a practice might be time otherwise “wasted” watching TV.

“I’ve had to become more disciplined and more organized,” says Murguia, a resident of West Hollywood. “As a single mother, you learn how to juggle.”

While the loss of personal time is a given for any parent who gets involved in coaching, the rewards of spending more time with their sons or daughters are manifold, say Murguia and other parent-coaches.

For Murguia, the decision to begin coaching Justin’s soccer team this year was part of a growing need to form a closer bond with her children.

Following a divorce seven years ago, Murguia started an employment agency, but found that the long hours required to run her own business left little time for her children.

“I had the business for three years and realized I was very distant from my kids,” she says. “It really was not a very happy home.”

She later gave up her employment agency and began working as a free-lance employment recruiter, a job that provided more flexibility in her work schedule. After volunteering for the World Cup tournament last year in Los Angeles, she decided to ask Justin what he would think of her coaching his American Youth Soccer Organization team.

“I thought maybe this will give us more chance to interact,” Murguia says. “It has given us some common ground that we can share and talk about. It really, definitely, has brought us together and a lot closer.”

Justin says he likes having his mother coach the team. “It’s really good,” he said one recent Saturday morning as he waited for his soccer match to begin at Fairfax High School. “We get to spend more time together and have more to talk about.”

Other parents who coach youth sports teams say the personal sacrifices of their time are worth it for the satisfaction of being more closely involved in their children’s lives.

Doug Close, an insurance company attorney, says he recently cut short a business trip to Monterey to get home for his son Stephen’s soccer practice. While others who attended the business conference took advantage of a free afternoon to play golf or tour the aquarium, Close caught an early flight home to Los Angeles.

“I really enjoy working with kids, and I think it’s one of the most important things you can do to give back to the community,” says Close, who with his wife, Margie, has four children ages 12 to 19.

Close, who has coached youth soccer and baseball for years, says that because his job often requires travel and irregular hours, balancing the demands of work and coaching is difficult at times.

One advantage of his job, Close says, is that his company’s workday begins at 7 a.m. and officially ends at 4 p.m., making it easier to get to afternoon soccer practices. Even so, the workload is often such that “I may have to take work home and work after hours.”

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Close says that some well-intentioned parents volunteer to coach their children’s teams without fully considering the significant personal commitment involved.

“Their eyes get a little bigger than they ought to,” he says. “They make a commitment to the children, and then something comes up at work and they say it’s not convenient to get to practice. They miss one practice, then a second, and then someone has to step in and fix the problem.”

Close suggests that parents who know they may be unable to attend the occasional practice or game enlist the help of another parent who can fill in as an assistant coach.

Several parents noted that people with 9-to-5 jobs may find it too difficult to handle coaching duties, which typically involve practices one or two afternoons a week.

“It’s more difficult for people with fixed hours to get to the park by 4:30 or 5 p.m.,” says Armando Lezama, a North Hollywood resident and self-employed draftsman who coaches his sons’ soccer team. “I work at home, so I don’t have to go to an office and don’t have to ask permission to leave earlier” to get to practices.