Steiners Are Double Trouble for Opponents

If the Steiner twins were a comedy team instead of soccer players for Mater Dei, there’s no doubt who would be the straight man.

Amy, with her wavy blond hair and sweet smile, slyly sets up the slightly more rough-and-tumble Trisha to deliver the punch line--and the laughs.

As toddlers, Amy and Trisha served as mascots for older sister Susan’s club soccer team, called “Double Trouble.” Amy wore a T-shirt that read “Double” and Trisha was “Trouble.”

The characterizations of the fraternal twins hold true today.

“All the teachers love her,” Trisha said about Amy.

What the teachers might not know is Amy is just playing the straight-man role--and often is equally culpable in her sister’s antics.

In first grade, for example, Amy whispered to her sister, “I took your quarter” and made like she was putting it in her backpack.

The quarter was Trisha’s ice cream money. Trisha, fearing her dessert was being threatened, leaned over and bit her sister.

Trisha tried to argue she was being robbed, but the principal slapped the 6-year-old with a two-day suspension anyway.

“I guess I was just sly,” Amy said, grinning.

In soccer, the Steiner partnership in the midfield has helped Mater Dei to three consecutive South Coast League championships. Mater Dei, ranked No. 2 in the county, is expected to be one of the top teams in the Southern Section Division I tournament, which begins this week.

“Their games kind of reflect their personalities,” Coach Austin Sharp said. “Trisha is always on the go, go, go, go, go, [with her] pony tail and elbows flying. Amy, on the other hand, is slower, does the simpler thing but is very constructive that way. She has a very good shot, where Trisha would just run the ball in the goal. Amy is a little bit more deliberate.”

Trisha is a two-time first-team all-league selection and Amy was a starter this season before injuring her knee last month. Amy sat out two weeks and is expected to be fully recovered for the playoffs.

When Trisha and Amy are on the field together, the diplomacy normally afforded teammates sometimes goes out the door. Whereas teammates who are not siblings might ask for the ball to be passed, Trisha and Amy aren’t afraid to demand it from each other.

“When Trisha and Amy are there, there’s a little bit more of an edge, occasionally, [when they say] ‘Amy’ or ‘Trisha,’ ” Sharp said. “For just that split second, it’s sisters.”

The Steiners are seniors who have played together on club and school teams for 12 years. Both have advanced to high levels in the Olympic Development Program. Amy has been a member of the district team the past two years. Trisha has been a member of the state team the past three years and advanced to the regional level in 1993.

The first time the girls played on different club teams was last year, after Amy left the San Juan Capistrano Blues 18-and-under team to play for the Orange Ice 18-and-under team, which is located closer to the girls’ home in Anaheim Hills. The Ice plays against the Blues in the Coast Soccer League and the teams met in August.

“I don’t know about her but I was telling my team, ‘We cannot lose this game. I am not going home if we lose,’ ” Trisha said.

Amy agreed.

“We were really pumped up to beat them,” she said.

Amy’s Ice won, but Trisha’s Blues won the next time the teams met. The teams are not scheduled to play each other again during the upcoming club season, so the score will remain 1-1.

The girls, 17, are also competitive in academics--Trisha has a slightly higher grade-point average, 3.9, but Amy has a more difficult math class, advanced-placement calculus. Both have high career goals as well--Amy hopes to study architecture at either Cal State Fullerton or Arizona. Trisha plans to study engineering at St. Mary’s or Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

College will bring the longest separation the girls have ever known. The greatest span of time they have spent apart has been a week here and there for various soccer camps.

“In a way, I think it will be kind of cool to be on my own for once. It will be freedom. People always look at us as twins and they don’t realize that we’re two separate people,” Trisha said. “But also, I guess it will be kind of sad because whenever I get bored I go stand in her doorway and stare at her. . . and you can’t do that in college--people will wonder what you’re doing.”

Like a punch line missing its setup.