You Can Celebrate This Title

Not so fast. There is still one little holiday present in the corner there, unopened, unnoticed, not trashed last weekend with everything else.

Today might be a good day to pick it up, examine it, smile with a Southland college sports team that did finish unbeaten and did win a national championship.

Even if those players did it in front of an estimated crowd of 60.

Even if they immediately celebrated with grape juice and a buzz cut.

Even if they couldn’t return home for two days because, it being Thanksgiving weekend, who could get a flight?

All hail the Azusa Pacific women’s soccer team, NAIA national champions, 25-0, the best of 216 schools in their class.

Yet still only good enough for the third page of a recent school media release.

They were shoved to the back by--what else?--a football team that soon will also be playing for a national title.

Which, one supposes, is still better than getting run over by that football team, which sometimes happens on their trendy unisex practice field.

An old story, right? Guys want to take the field early, women are still there, guys start running pass routes into corner kicks . . .

“We’re out there dribbling and footballs are flying over our heads,” senior Nicole Restivo said.

Then she laughed. The only thing these soccer bums from mostly places like Laguna Hills and La Verne do better than play soccer is laugh.

Not to worry, champs.

Today you are strictly front page.

“Cool,” said Restivo.

“Funny,” said freshman Kendra Payne.

This funny factor cannot be underrated, considering the Cougars may be this fall’s only national champions who don’t have a locker room.

They borrow one from the guys during games. But even then, before the game they walk outside to use a public restroom.

And you know how long the lines can be at women’s restrooms.

“But we’ve never been late for games or anything, if that’s what you mean,” said Restivo, laughing again. “We manage.”

Do they ever.

With only two seniors among 16 players, with nobody on a full soccer scholarship, with a coach who held down three jobs during the season, they beat defending champion Mobile on its own Alabama turf in a shootout in the national semifinals.

And then they won the championship against Simon Fraser of British Columbia when right-footed Payne scored the eventual winning goal with her left foot.

Her shoeless left foot.

She had run out of her size 7 cleat moments earlier.

“I was like, in awe,” she said.

She could have been talking about the goal, or what happened shortly after the Cougars celebrated a 2-1 victory by pouring sparkling juice over each others’ heads and eating fruit brought by their parents.

“We’re in college, and our parents are still bringing snacks to the game, like we’re 10 years old,” Restivo said.

The party quickly moved to a nearby hotel room, where the players sat Christian Johnson, their 28-year-old coach, on a chair and brought out some towels.

“You promised,” they cried, producing scissors and razors and proceeding to shave him bald.

It is amazing that Johnson even had time to go to Mobile to coach the game, considering he is only a part-time employee at the school, and was also coaching a high school team and a soccer club.

It is also amazing he would let anyone on his team touch him, considering what happened after his players had clinched the conference championship.

Anybody can respond to the time-worn cry of, “Hustle!”

What really gets these women going is, “Dog pile!”

They jumped on their coach so hard during that conference clinching, he broke a rib.

This meant that when they later won the regional tournament, he could not make good on an earlier promise to fall on his belly and do the “worm” dance for 50 yards.

You hate it when that happens.

He painfully lasted only 10 yards, but made another promise.

If the Cougars won the national title, he would endure one of five things:

Tongue piercing. Navel piercing. Nipple piercing. Tattoo. Total haircut.

“A real tough choice,” he said.

Not to mention, one that, for all his accomplishments, Bobby Bowden has probably never faced.

Today Johnson looks terrible, but he is laughing with his team, because he knows this feeling will last longer than his haircut.

“National champions,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s still hard to imagine.”

Harder, still, is to understand the reason they give for winning it.

“We were a family,” Restivo said. “And we had fun.”

You mean there are still places where it works that way?

After beating Mobile in that 150-minute game that featured four overtime periods before the shootout, they didn’t do interviews or sign autographs.

They trudged back to their hotel and raided every ice machine, filling up their bathtubs so they could chill their feet.

“I think the hotel was glad when we left,” Payne said.

When Restivo hollered at the reserves to be more vocal on the sideline during the championship game, it wasn’t a made-for-TV moment.

One of the players looked up and said, “Sorry, we’re praying.”

And what did members of the Azusa Pacific women’s national champion soccer team do after waiting two days to catch a plane back home from Alabama?

They went to the Mobile airport four hours early because they didn’t want to get charged another night at the hotel.

Then they spread out in a quiet terminal corner.

And for nearly four hours, they studied.

Yes, there still are places where it works that way. Unopened gifts indeed.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com