Friends Get Their Kicks at Santa Margarita : Soccer: Luke and Lingo, both seniors, want to win a title together before moving on to college.

Meagan Lingo and Annie Luke sit cross-legged and facing each other high atop a training table in the Santa Margarita High athletic department.

Luke squints her eyes at Lingo.

“I don’t know if we really have that chemistry,” Luke tells her best friend of nine years.

Lingo squints her eyes back.

“We don’t play together, really, because I play [on] defense,” Lingo says.

“Personality-wise, I know everything, but soccer is not the same,” Luke says. “[In soccer] I just know not to get in her way, I mean, look at all these bruises!”

Luke grabs one of Lingo’s legs and begins pointing out the contusions. Soon, both are telling each other about every scrape and bump they suffered in that day’s practice.

After nine years spent virtually side by side, there’s no need to leave out the gory details.

“There cannot be two better friends than us,” Luke says.

Lingo and Luke, both 17, have always lived only a few hundred yards apart. They remain as inseparable as when they were children building tree forts on the hill behind Luke’s house.

They are in their fourth year starting for the Santa Margarita varsity and also have played together for the Southern California Blues soccer club for the past five years.

Although they deny having the kind of on-the-field chemistry that often develops after many years of playing soccer together, Lingo and Luke certainly have skills individually. Lingo, a midfielder, was a second-team all-Southern Section selection last season and Luke, a forward, was a second-team all-County selection by The Times.

Lingo and Luke are major reasons Santa Margarita (6-0), three-time defending Sea View League champion, has a good chance to win the Southern Section Division I title this season. They are two of 10 returning starters for the Eagles, who advanced to the Division I semifinals last season.

If the Eagles win the title this season, it will be one highlight of a friendship between Lingo and Luke that has defined their lives. Luke was 9 years old when her father, Bill, who was her coach in a local youth soccer league, drew Lingo’s name for their team. The girls became fast friends and soon discovered that if they cut across a few back yards, they could meet on a hill behind their houses in San Juan Capistrano within minutes.

This backyard trail became their favorite meeting spot and the launching point of countless childhood escapades: It was where they buried their candy to hide it from their brothers. It was where they would take “crazy turtle rides”--fashioning a boat from a plastic tub shaped like a turtle that was intended to be used as a child’s sandbox. Lingo and Luke would huddle in it, point it downhill and skid, careening, down a dirt slope.

One gets the feeling these adventures have never really stopped.

On a recent water-skiing trip at Lake Powell, Utah, Lingo and Luke manned the double inner tube with Lingo’s brother, Matt, behind the wheel of the boat. After many wild spins around the lake, Luke turned to Lingo and said, “Let’s tell him to stop.”

But one look between them and their resolve was strengthened. The boat took off again, dragging them laughing and screaming around the lake.

This fearlessness also shows on the soccer field.

“[Lingo] is a hard worker and she’ll go in for anything. She totally is like a truck. She’ll just ram right through anything,” Luke said.

And Lingo has scar on her forehead to prove it.

Last season, Lingo was going for a header when she collided with Riki Ann Serrins, Santa Margarita’s goalkeeper. Serrins’ teeth crashed into Lingo’s head and both players landed in bloody heaps on the ground--Serrins with several teeth missing and Lingo with a gaping wound on her forehead.

If Lingo is the more physical player of the two, Luke is the fancier.

“[Luke] is very offense-minded. She’s very deceptive. She does lots of little flicks and stuff,” Lingo said.

One of Santa Margarita’s biggest problems last year was its inability to win decisively. But in the Vanguard Cup final on Dec. 9, Santa Margarita scored four goals in the second half to pound El Modena, 5-1.

“This year, I think we have [a killer instinct]. I think that’s what we did against El Modena,” said Luke, who was named the tournament’s most valuable offensive player.

This season is the last chance for Lingo and Luke to win a Southern Section title because they are seniors. Although they have plans to go to college, the topic is rarely discussed between them because they probably will go to different schools.

Both are considering UCLA and Boston College, but Luke is also considering Loyola Marymount and Arizona. Lingo is also considering Stanford, Dartmouth and Harvard.

Sitting around a camp fire at a team retreat before this season, each player took a turn talking about something important to her. Lingo and Luke were in tears even before it was their turn to talk because they were thinking about the inevitable separation that college will bring.

It seems unlikely, however, that a few years at college would change this friendship toomuch.

Said Luke: “We have plans for the rest of our lives.”