Affluence, Soccer Success Often Go Hand in Hand

Soccer is by far the fastest-growing high school sport for girls in the country--according to the National Federation of State High School Assns., participation skyrocketed 86% in a six-year period between 1990-91 and 1996-97--but among the elite teams, it’s hardly a sport for the masses.

“The best teams are all in pockets of affluence,” Los Alamitos Coach Mossy Kennedy said. “It’s not just here in Orange County, it’s that way in the whole Southern Section. Actually, it’s pretty much on a national scale. All our best women players come out of suburbia.”

Kennedy points to the final Orange County top 10 poll, which looks like an ad for expensive housing. Two of the teams are in Mission Viejo, three others in the nearby South County communities of Rancho Santa Margarita, Laguna Hills and Aliso Viejo, one in Irvine, one in Los Alamitos, one in south Huntington Beach and one in Anaheim (which draws most of its students from Yorba Linda). The anomaly is Mater Dei in Santa Ana, which is hardly a school for the impoverished.

It usually costs at least $1,500 a year to play club soccer--not counting hundreds of gallons of gasoline and hundreds of pounds of fast food--and requires a formidable commitment of time for both child and parent.

Ask any parent of a club soccer player the last time they had a weekend free.

“I’m not at the point I would call club elitist, but it certainly takes money,” Santa Margarita Coach Chuck Morales said. “By the time a young lady finishes high school, with eight or nine years of club soccer, it’s quite an investment.

“Of course the pot at end of rainbow is having that sport pay for your [college] education. There are a lot of scholarships out there.”

Scholarships that probably won’t go to the kids who need them most.

“I have a friend who coaches at Santa Monica High and he’s got about five club players, but the rest of his team can’t afford to play club,” Capistrano Valley Coach Jack Peterson said. “Those kids only touch a ball during the high-school season.

“And there are other kids who don’t even play high school soccer because they can’t afford shin guards and cleats.”