BUILDING A BETTER PLAYER

Would Mater Dei’s football team beat the tar out of Bolsa Grande’s? Sure, but any discussion of disparity in Orange County prep sports has to start with girls’ soccer, where the difference between the haves and the have-nots is akin to a stealth bomber vs. an Iraqi command-and-control bunker.

Chances are good most of Bolsa Grande’s starters had tossed a football around at some point in their lives before making the team . . . not to mention the starting lineup. At Savanna, however, Coach Johnny Torres starts a number of girls “who have never played soccer in their lives,” and there isn’t a single club player on his roster.

Way up at the other end of the spectrum, at top-ranked Capistrano Valley, nearly every player in the entire program--freshman-sophomore, junior varsity and varsity--is a club player and the majority started playing AYSO soccer as kindergartners.

Four varsity players have been selected to play on the state under-17 Olympic Development Program team and two others made the under-16 national team. And, as Chuck Morales, coach of eighth-ranked Santa Margarita, points out, “The rich are getting richer.” The Cougar freshman-sophomore team, undefeated in South Coast League play while scoring 34 goals and giving up four, won the consolation championship of a tournament for junior-varsity teams.

“There are a lot of girls in that program, on both the freshman team and the JV, who could easily start on varsity almost anywhere else,” Morales said. “But with the talent Jack [Peterson, Capistrano Valley coach] has coming in, there’s no guarantee they’ll ever get their turn on varsity.”

Anybody who knows soccer knows the most talented team--even one that dominates the game--doesn’t always win, but is it possible to have high school players who are too talented? Capistrano Valley sophomores Ashley Casas and Kristen Moore were in Florida training with the under-16 national team when their teammates were upset in the first round of the Southern Section playoffs by 10th-ranked Esperanza Friday.

Morales’ program at Santa Margarita isn’t exactly poverty-stricken when it comes to talent. He had more than 100 girls try out this season, nearly all of them club players. And Mossy Kennedy, in his first season as coach at No. 7 Los Alamitos, kept 66 girls in his program--”it’s too many, but I wanted to eliminate some of the heartbreak”--and still had to cut some club players.

With the elite teams, it’s no longer simply about the quantity of club players, it’s about quality--how long they have been playing club and at what level, premier, gold, silver or bronze?

“You can pretty much rank the teams by the pedigree of their club players,” Kennedy said. “When top-level club players are assembled in significant numbers, those teams are going to do very, very well.”

So, while Torres might be one heck of a soccer coach and some of his players superb athletes, they’re just not going to be able to compete with that kind of depth of soccer talent.

Fortunately--because they are in the relatively weak Orange League--they usually don’t have to . . . unless they have the misfortune of meeting a club-player-laden side in a tournament.

A Soft Touch

The differences in pure speed or raw athleticism may not be that great between high school soccer players, but the club players are able to dominate because of three huge advantages: ball skills honed by club trainers for countless hours in practice, a confidence born of having weathered years of the club wars and creative on-field decision-making learned from the trial-and-error experience of all those games.

“I hesitate to say it, but the day of the natural athlete coming out and making the team are gone here,” said William Bell, in his 14th year at second-ranked Woodbridge. “When I first got here, I had one club player and an aggressive kid with good speed was a welcome addition.

“Now, we hold three days of tryouts, but I know after 20 minutes. The one skill I look at is trapping the ball. Most anyone can pass, a lot can dribble some, but that first touch, that’s a world of difference. And that’s a skill that comes from repetition in practice and games.”

Being able to receive the ball and hold it under pressure sometimes has as much to do with the mental approach as physical prowess. “You can’t ever downplay the impact of an intangible like confidence,” Kennedy said. “These girls know the girls on the other teams and what clubs they play for. I even catch myself talking about how many or what level club players an opponent has.”

But the biggest factor may be experience. Soccer is a fluid game of endless possibilities and opportunities and the more you play, the more likely you are to recognize and capitalize on those opportunities.

“Great trainers help, great coaches help, playing with and watching great players helps,” said Steve Sampson, former coach of the men’s U.S. national team and now technical director for the California Youth Soccer Assn.-South, “but the best teacher of this game is the game itself.”

Combine technical expertise, a positive outlook, experience and a tactical acumen absorbed from club strategy sessions and halftime talks, and you’ve got what, the complete player at age 14?

“These girls are receiving better training at younger ages from club trainers who are increasingly using better training methods and are more dedicated to their sport,” said Morales, who is also girls’ youth director at the Mission Viejo-based West Coast Futbol Club.

“We’re making demands of club players at 9 and 10 that we never did until they were 14 only a few years ago. They’re exposed to more and more at a younger age and we’re seeing a new generation of players who arrive in high school totally prepared.”

A New Wave

If this year’s crop of big-impact freshmen who are helping propel the county’s best teams through the Southern Section playoffs are any indication, the girls who began playing club soccer long before their teens will soon rule the sport:

* Santa Margarita’s Katie Rivera is already one of the Southern Section’s most exciting and creative offensive threats. She comes off the bench and leads the team with 13 goals, although she’s averaging about 20 minutes a game, which means she’s only on the field for about 25% of the game. “We’re trying to bring her along slowly,” Morales said, “but every time she gets in the game, she finds a way to score.”

* Daniella Bosio anchors the Eagles’ defense, starting at sweeper, a position that requires speed, skill, instinct and flawless decision-making. “If you know anything about the game and that position,” Morales said, “you know what kind of an all-around player she is as a freshman.”

* Mission Viejo’s Stacey Mescher--all 5 feet and 95 pounds of her--is a wizard with the ball at her feet. She starts at striker and is one of the sixth-ranked Diablos’ leading scorers with nine goals. “She’s a perfect example of a freshman who isn’t intimidated by going up against players who weigh 40 pounds more than she does,” Capistrano Valley’s Peterson said. “That’s the great thing about freshmen, they don’t know they’re supposed to be scared.”

* Los Alamitos goalkeeper Ashley DeAlejandro, who has been playing on a club team in Palos Verdes since she was 8, has 16 shutouts this year. “I’ll be honest,” Kennedy said, “I can’t provide the coaching that can match the technical skills she already has. She has had great coaches throwing tons of stuff at her for years and she has gobbled up every bit of it. She’s very, very polished and she’s just 14.”

* Woodbridge’s Ina Kain is a starting midfielder and the starting point for many of the Warriors’ offensive chances. During the last month of the regular season, she scored or had an assist on many of Woodbridge’s game-winning goals. “She’s really contributing in all facets of the game,” Bell said.

Fifth-ranked Aliso Niguel starts 10 players who are either freshmen or sophomores.

“It’s hard to believe, but there are players, eighth-graders, seventh-graders, even some sixth-graders, who are already as good or even better than the Riveras and the [Ashley] Casas and the [Kristen] Moores,” Morales said. “Just wait until you see the caliber of players coming in.”

Inheriting the Wind

For the fortunate such as Bell, Kennedy, Morales and Peterson, the influx of well-prepared players has revolutionized the job of coaching high school soccer.

“We don’t have to worry about the little things, like skill,” Peterson said, laughing. “And you can talk to them at halftime as if it was a college team. Often they have a better solution to a tactical problem than I do. And you don’t even have to wait until halftime, they have the expertise to make adjustments 10 minutes into the game.”

There are some inherent problems for those lucky enough to be overloaded with talent, however. The players often come from different clubs with different philosophical approaches to the game, which means an understanding of the high school coach’s style is paramount.

“With players this skilled, you can be tempted to just let them play, but maintaining the discipline of the system is huge, especially when you get to the playoffs,” Peterson said. “You put in the system at every level, you preach it and preach it, and when the kids buy into it, everything gels from there.

“Every year, there are examples of very talented teams that don’t have a set system and they dissolve into chaos when they get into a game with a team, even with less talented players, that sticks to the system.”

And the coach of players proficient at juggling a soccer ball has to become expert at juggling the psyches of 20 young women, with team unity hanging in the balance. Peterson, who has premier club players sitting on his bench, doesn’t have to bother with players with attitude problems, but he still works hard to promote cohesiveness with team get-togethers such as carbo-loading dinners before home games.

“The girls have fierce loyalty for their clubs,” Morales said, “so it can be difficult getting players to work together. I’ve been here five years and I’ve seen it every year.

“And while the club trainers are providing us with a better and better product, the downside of that is the older players already in the program have to work that much harder to keep their spots. It’s a very delicate balance to try and merge those two generations in a graceful fashion.”

Mission Viejo’s Mescher, who took the starting position of a senior, says she definitely felt “weird” when the season began, and she had the advantage of knowing many of her teammates because her twin sisters, Jen and Kristyn, now at San Jose State, played last year. But it didn’t consume her thoughts, she was too busy learning to adjust to “all the girls who are so much bigger knocking me off the ball.”

“I felt bad replacing a senior, but I realized there’s really nothing I could do about it,” she said. “I just want to play. No one can blame me for that.”

Indeed, soccer’s new wave of young guns are too dynamic to be denied . . . not that anyone really wants to try. “You can’t hold them back,” Morales said. “The young ones bring you enthusiasm, a certain daredevilness, a willingness to try anything without fear of failure. Of course, the older ones bring you a maturity that is essential, especially when the going gets tough.

“You need them both and we’re on the hot seat to find a happy balance.”

It’s a seat Savanna’s Torres would plop on in a heartbeat and welcome the chance to see if he can stand the heat.