Canoga Park’s Recovery Is Built on Camaraderie

It could be the peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwiches that players eat before every game.

Maybe it’s the addition of a talented transfer to its roster.

Or perhaps it’s a case of a senior-dominated squad playing as a more cohesive unit.

All could be contributing factors in the Canoga Park boys’ soccer team’s stunning turnaround this season after finishing with a 1-11-1 record last year.

Canoga Park is 13-1-1 and 7-0-1 in Sunset Six League play after defeating visiting Tujunga Verdugo Hills, 4-0, on Friday night.

“When you look at the numbers, it’s absolutely amazing,” said senior Daniel Croymans, one of Canoga Park’s captains and a three-year starter at defender. “But we knew that we had some talented players on this team when we started training for this season. So we made a pact that we would work as hard as we could in practice and play as hard as we could in games and see what happened.”

The results have been impressive.

Canoga Park has outscored its opponents, 50-10, and the Hunters’ only loss was a 1-0 decision to a quality Thousand Oaks team in pool play of the Newhall Hart tournament last month.

“They’ve learned to play the game this year,” fourth-year Canoga Park Coach Jake Gwin said about his players. “They seem to understand that you play by moving the ball around with passes, not by dribbling it.”

Too much dribbling contributed to Canoga Park’s dismal record last season. But Gwin, an All-City Section player at Woodland Hills Taft in 1989 and a veteran of eight seasons playing in second-division leagues in Mexico, England, Germany, Denmark and the U.S., wasn’t concerned.

“I wanted them to be able to do things innately,” said Gwin, 32. “So I let them explore. That might have been detrimental when it came to wins and losses, but they loved the fact that they could beat a guy one-on-one. The problem was they couldn’t get enough of that. There were a lot of black holes on the team last year where the ball would go in to someone and it wouldn’t come out.”

Senior forward Allanyire Lopez, a two-year starter who has 12 goals this season and is Canoga Park’s other captain, concurred.

“We abused it,” he said about the freedom Gwin gave the players. “There was too much selfishness and not enough teamwork.”

Canoga Park, which advanced to the quarterfinals of the City playoffs in 2002 before last season’s implosion, defeated North Hills Monroe, Venice and Granada Hills Kennedy in its first three games this season. But the Hunters began to believe in themselves after going 3-1 in the Hart tournament.

“We honestly thought the Hart tournament was going to be a humbling experience for us.” Croymans said. “When we did pretty good, we said, ‘Hey look. We played with some top-notch teams and we held our own.’ ”

A sense of camaraderie has contributed to the success of the team, Croymans said.

He said says that sense of “family” helped junior Jorge Paez, Canoga Park’s leading scorer with 14 goals, feel at ease around the team after he transferred from Reseda Cleveland last summer. It also led to a game-day ritual in which the team meets at the football field at lunchtime to stretch and knock the ball around before eating peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwiches prepared by Gwin and his girlfriend.

Despite Canoga Park’s success, Gwin knows there are critics out there who contend that the Hunters play in a league that isn’t one of the City’s strongest.

“But you can’t ignore our record,” he said. “We’ve only had one loss and we haven’t had any letdowns like some of the other highly regarded teams in the City.”