Cano Stunned by NCAA Snub

Usually you can hear Marine Cano before you see him. That’s why it was so unusual to see the excitable UC Irvine women’s soccer coach at a loss for words Tuesday.

He had just found out that his team did not make the cut for the NCAA tournament. The Anteaters won six of their last seven games to finish 15-7. They won the Big West tournament, although that does not carry an automatic bid.

It wasn’t good enough for the tournament selection committee.

“I am actually dumbfounded,” Cano said.

He had no explanation.

“It’s a total surprise for me,” he said. “Total . . .”

He tried to find some other words but couldn’t.

” . . . surprise,” he concluded.

In Cano’s world, the importance of soccer ranks somewhere between breathing and eating. And the NCAA tournament?

“That’s what I live for,” Cano said. “And that’s what my players live for.”

He won the Division II tournament in 1991 when he was coaching Cal State Dominguez Hills and went back to the final four the next year.

He came to Irvine in 1994 and has tried to bring the program to national prominence. He wants the players to experience the tournament and pass that knowledge on to the next group of freshmen.

Cano’s souvenir of the championship is a personalized California license plate reading “NCAA 91” that hangs in his office. He has another plate at home: “MR SOCR.”

It’s hard to think of any name for Cano other than Mr. Soccer. His wife even had the nickname registered as a trademark.

He very much is Mr. Irvine Soccer, doing everything from selling ads to lining up community appearances.

Watching the effort Cano puts in during a game, working the sidelines with frantic pacing and cajoling, it’s hard to imagine Cano half-stepping in anything he decided to do. His thing just happens to be soccer.

He didn’t follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a boxer and ran a gym.

“He actually tried to get me to be a fighter at a very young age,” Cano said recently. “I think my mom had a big hand in deterring that.

“I remember getting a couple of shots in the head a few times and going home and crying and my mom said, ‘Uh-uh.’ ”

He was a point guard in basketball, but he was 5-11 in high school and that makes it tough to dominate on the court.

However, the vision and hand-eye coordination did make him a great goalkeeper.

“I love basketball,” said Cano, who is now 6-1. “But sometimes it takes longer to click and contribute in terms of a positive. Soccer, it just clicked. All of a sudden, I had a coach and teammates looking at me and depending on me. I took that responsibility and I don’t think I ever had it before.

“I remember playing basketball. I didn’t score the points. My job was to get the ball to Ralph.”

Cano got hooked on soccer when he was 9 years old and the family moved from Los Angeles to Torrance. He played in the fledgling AYSO. His high school didn’t have a team, so as a 15-year-old he played on a semi-pro team with people five and six years older.

“I was playing against men at a very early age,” Cano said. “I earned my spurs there.

“I’d come home pretty beat up.”

At 21, he began a nine-year professional career in a merry-go-round of leagues. And when he no longer could keep up on the field he needed some other way to stay with his passion.

“Playing is the ultimate, but coaching is the next best thing,” Cano said. “ And I just love the game of soccer. There’s no question about it.

“It’s not the same in the sense that you don’t have a big release as a coach. As a player, you work hard all week, and you spend that energy in a park for 90 minutes. As a coach, it’s mostly all mental. You can run with the kids, you can do sit-ups, but you don’t play.

“The gift--for me, the ultimate gift--is to play the game. But coaching, you’re the maestro of the orchestra. You kind of set the tone, but they’ve got to play. It’s a great feeling, but you don’t enjoy it as much as the players.

“I love being around the players, knowing the emotions they go through. I like seeing their great time playing the game. I get to experience it.”

At times, it looks like he isn’t just experiencing it secondhand. He looked like he was back in goal, diving around the sidelines for the Big West championship Sunday, trying to retrieve balls as soon as possible to save precious seconds in his team’s 3-2 overtime victory over Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

This by a man who, the week before, said he had mellowed.

“Early in my coaching career, I thought I was still playing,” Cano said. “I think some people who would watch me and analyze my coaching would still say the same. But not as much, no way. I’m a vocal coach, I’m a busy coach, but I think I’ve toned down. And that shocks some people. But I have a passion for the game and that’s not going to change.”

That’s why it was so disheartening to see the man who lives for games find out there are no more games left in the season.

The tournament committee cut off the number of teams from the West at four. If USC, which beat Irvine and finished 16-3-1 couldn’t get in the tournament, the Anteaters didn’t have a chance. It didn’t help that they lost to the tournament teams they faced during the regular season.

Cano sat in a restaurant with members of the Irvine athletic department. Cano traded in his iced tea for something stronger: a glass of Coke.

All that caffeine and he still seemed sluggish.

When he’s excited, he’ll actually utter things like “Boy, oh boy.”

On Tuesday, all he could say was, “Oh, man.”