CSUF Notebook : Soccer: More Than Paper Profits

On the steps of the Cal State Fullerton soccer office the other day, about half of the team sat stuffing envelopes with flyers about an upcoming game. Some days, they go out to officiate youth games. During the summer, they are required to work at some of the more than a dozen Titan Soccer School camp sessions.

This is the way that Al Mistri, the rotund, mustachioed Damien High School math teacher who has been the coach of the Fullerton soccer team for the past seven seasons, runs his program.

He runs it out of a tiny and cluttered office/walk-in closet attached to the rear of the Titan Football House. He runs it with the help of Gerard Kennelly, a former Titan player who is a Los Angeles police officer by night and an assistant coach by day. He runs it with the help of Rick Garcia, a former player who does administrative and promotional work.

In 1981, Mistri, who had coached La Verne’s Damien High team to five Southern Section semifinal games in 10 years, took over as part-time Titan head coach for $4,500 a year, an amount he figured would barely pay for the gas of his commutes.

In those days, the Titans had no scholarship money and played a schedule rife with Division II teams and determined largely by the distance the Titans were willing to travel in a van.

These days, the program has a budget of $100,500 a year although it gets only $6,000 in athletic department contributions. Much of the rest is raised through the extensive summer camp operation and contributions from the Titan Athletic Foundation, the Fullerton booster organization. The players now share the NCAA-limit 11 full scholarships among themselves, the Titans play the a competitive schedule, and when they travel, they sometimes fly.

Think this man knows a bit about organization?

“At this point, that’s the thing I know how to do best besides eat,” Mistri said.

By which he means, understand, that he knows it well.

The Titans last week enjoyed perhaps the greatest victory in the program’s history when they beat 10th-ranked UCLA, snapping a 26-game Bruin home winning streak and in a single day gaining a measure of the respectability the Titan program so earnestly seeks. The night they won, Mistri swears, he did not sleep.

Sunday, Fullerton beat Nevada Las Vegas, which was ranked eighth and is leading the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. Had the Titans not been upset in overtime by both UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara earlier this season, they would likely be tied for first place in the PCAA, in line for the conference’s automatic NCAA tournament bid.

As it is, Fullerton, which made the NCAA tournament for the first time ever last year after tying for the PCAA title despite an 8-11-2 overall record, must hope for an at-large bid, something Mistri thinks will be difficult to come by because the Fullerton program still lacks the prestige it seeks.

Instead, the Titans (11-7) likely will have to settle for tying the school record for victories in a season, which they will do if they win their remaining two games--both at home, where they are undefeated this season--against UCI on Friday and UC Santa Barbara on Sunday.

Mistri asks his players to do a lot beyond come to practice and play games. But he also gives them a lot. Soccer scholarships are not heavily funded by athletic departments, but at Fullerton, hard-to-come-by scholarship money is available, largely because of the summer camp operation.

Mistri’s jocular nature, his appearance and the requirements he makes of his players make him an interesting person to play for.

“Playing for Mistri is like playing for a cartoon character sometimes,” said Eamon Kavanough, a freshman who is a starting midfielder. “Then at times it’s like playing for a drill sergeant.”

Kavanough is one of five freshman who start or have started for the Titans. Another, Greg Cipolla, an Irvine High graduate, is the team’s third leading scorer, behind Tom Atencio and Ben Macaluso, both seniors, and both among the eight players on the team from Damien High, which has long been a feeder program.

Chuck Smoot, a senior midfielder, has watched the program progress.

“I like it here,” Smoot said. “It’s not just playing soccer. You go and work the camps and you learn to understand the financial part. Sometimes stuff needs to be done and people don’t want to do it, but you just have to bear down. I see things getting better here because of that.”

The Titan basketball team, with five seniors on this season’s roster, will be faced with a need to rebuild next season, and already has received verbal commitments from two high school players.

Mike Brown, a 6-foot-6 forward/guard who averaged 13 points and 12 rebounds last season as a junior at Westchester High School, said Monday he has made a verbal commitment to Fullerton and will sign a letter of intent on Nov. 11 when the early signing period begins.

“I really felt comfortable with Fullerton,” said Brown, who had narrowed his choices to Fullerton and Pepperdine. “It was important to me to be comfortable with the people.”

Terry Nelson, a 6-6 forward who averaged 14 points and 10 rebounds as a junior at Long Beach Poly, made a verbal commitment last week.

Titan Notes

The Cal State Fullerton soccer team defeated Brigham Young, 2-0, in a college exhibition soccer match Monday night on Titan Field. The Titans scored two quick goals in the first half when senior midfielder Tom Atencio stole a ball and scored at 10:07 and senior Chuck Smoot, a Fountain Valley High graduate, scored on a penalty kick at 31:13.