On Top of the World

The boys’ soccer team touted as the best in the country doesn’t play on well-manicured turf in a pristine stadium. On this day, in fact, the pride of Santa Ana Saddleback has been relegated by rain and swamped practice fields to strutting its stuff on the blacktop.

“I would play soccer with anything, even a lemon, or whatever’s around,” freshman defender Oscar Reyes said. “There’s no day that passes that I don’t touch a soccer ball.”

It shows.

Saddleback was ranked the No. 1 boys’ soccer team in the nation by Student Sports magazine last week. The unbeaten Roadrunners backed that up with a 1-0 victory over Cerritos Gahr in their Southern Section Division III playoff opener Saturday.

“This is something really amazing,” Saddleback senior forward Jair Cruz said. “We have to show why we’re No. 1 in the nation. We have it in the back of minds, but it just makes us play harder.”

The Roadrunners (22-0-2), who advanced to the second round of the playoffs last season, have won 13 of their last 14 games and have recorded 13 shutouts this season. Winners of the Golden West League championship for the second consecutive season, they travel to Del Rio League co-champion Whittier California (15-6-3) for a second-round game today.

“Nobody wants to lose. That’s one thing,” junior midfielder Agustin Avila said with a grin. “You’re guaranteed we’re trying our best to win.”

The roster includes a star player, junior midfielder Alex Moreno, who was kicked out of Saddleback and sent to Anaheim Century last year for disciplinary reasons. Although he was not allowed to play soccer at Century, Moreno has a team-leading 16 goals to go with eight assists this season.

“I really did regret that,” Moreno said of being banished for a semester last spring as a result of fighting. “I live across the street, and my friends are all here. I just wanted to come back and play here. That was my priority.”

Moreno is not the only one with deep ties to the school.

Senior midfielder Carlos Godinez’s grandfather once served as an assistant to Saddleback Coach Mel Silva. Godinez’s mother and two uncles are former Saddleback players. Silva, a former player in his 18th season as coach, graduated from the school in 1983. His assistants, Carlos Amezcua and Carlos Vizcaino, also are Saddleback graduates.

“There’s a big history here,” said Silva, who has led the Roadrunners to 11 league titles but hasn’t won a Southern Section championship.

Family ties, not tradition, bind players such as Reyes, the team’s starting left fullback. He is joined on the back line by older brother Jorge, a junior defender. Their cousin, sophomore Cesar Zarate, is the team’s starting goalkeeper. Edgar and Jeffrey Cervantes are the Roadrunners’ other set of brothers.

“There’s a lot of team chemistry going on,” said Godinez, who has eight goals and three assists. “We’re more than a team. We’re like a family here.”

Not all the players are related, but each shares a common heritage and a mutual love of soccer.

Every player on the Saddleback squad is Latino -- no surprise at a school in which nearly 90% of the student population of 3,200 is Latino -- and the sport has been passed down to the younger generation.

“It’s just a community thing, the biggest thing here,” Godinez said. “With most of us, our parents played soccer together, and then we were born, so we just grew up with them at the fields.”

The Roadrunners have collected the ball and taken it from there.

Saddleback, with several players with club experience but none who have received Division I scholarships, started 9-0 before settling for a scoreless tie with cross-town rival Santa Ana in December.

The Roadrunners defeated Anaheim Servite, Anaheim Esperanza and Long Beach Millikan en route to the Millikan tournament title, then strung together a 10-match streak before tying Costa Mesa Estancia, 1-1, on Feb. 4. The latest winning streak is at three games.

“We knew we had a good team,” Avila said. “But we didn’t know it would be this good.”