Tacoma Shows the Sockers Its Stars Are Rising

TACOMA, Wash. —  There comes a time when the rest catches up with the best, a time when a perennial champion gets caught in an in-between year when the veterans are a step slow and the youngsters are not quite ready.

That time came for the Sockers Thursday night.

Never before had this team lost a postseason series, not in a five-year reign at the top of indoor soccer. Never before had this team had to retire to a locker room and contemplate the frustration of an unfinished job.

“I don’t like it,” said team captain Jean Willrich, a part of all five championship teams, “but it had to end sometime.”

All the Sockers had in front of them as they filed from the din of the Tacoma Dome was today’s flight back to San Diego. The Tacoma Stars, 8-5 winners, would meet Dallas for the Major Indoor Soccer League championship.

Ironically, the Sockers lost the kind of game upon which they had thrived during their reign as champions. It was a must game, being the seventh in a seven-game series. They had been 7-0 in games they had to win to stay alive. They got to this game because they could not win a game they really didn’t have to win Tuesday in San Diego.

“That’s the simple explanation,” Willrich said. “When we didn’t finish it at home, when we have everything in hand, we didn’t deserve it.”

Indeed, Tacoma played like the team with five straight championships, looking quick, looking efficient and looking as if was destined to succeed. The Sockers, meanwhile, were looking like all those teams they had beaten for all those years.

If there was a time when the outcome seemed inevitable, it came relatively early. It came five minutes into the second period, and it should have told the Sockers it was over.

Within the space of a few seconds, the Sockers peppered Tacoma goalkeeper Mike Dowler with a flurry of shots. They hit him with left-footers, right-footers, headers and maybe even a deflection off someone’s chin. It all happened so fast, and nothing went in.

Already ahead 3-1, the Stars withstood that barrage and came away with a 4-1 lead at the half.

It was time to play out the string of an era.

“The goalkeeping was superb,” said Ron Newman, the Sockers’ coach. “We just couldn’t get the ball in the net.”

It was not particularly surprising that it should have ended for the Sockers Thursday night. Maybe what was so surprising was that they lasted as long as they did in the postseason.

This was a year in which the Sockers finished third in the MISL’s Western Division with a 27-25 record. This was clearly no longer the dominant team of indoor soccer.

“I think we did bloody marvelous to get where we are,” Newman said. “If someone had told me back when we had a six-game losing streak that we’d make it 12 games into the playoffs, I’d have been surprised.”

In all fairness to the Sockers, this was not the healthiest of seasons. Their top scoring threats--Branko Segota, Brian Quinn, Juli Veee and Hugo Perez--missed a total of 82 regular-season games with injuries and played at less than 100% in untold others.

“We did everything we could to come back from an injury-riddled season,” Newman said. “You can’t blame the guys. They gave it all they had.”

For the first time in what seems like forever, it was not enough.