Some Players Find Better Opportunities Out of School

Jannelle Jesme, one of the state’s most promising young soccer players, tucked a ball under her arm and walked alone to a deserted park near her house in Coto de Caza.

Later that afternoon, hundreds of girls would gather at high schools throughout the county to participate in prep soccer games.

But Jesme wouldn’t be joining them.

After playing on the junior varsity team at Santa Margarita High last season as a freshman, Jesme decided high school soccer was a waste of time--too many practices and not enough quality competition, she said.

Jesme and six other girls from around Southern California, including senior Shauna Itri of Edison, are giving up their high school eligibility this season to play club soccer for the Southern California Blues women’s team, which is part of the prestigious San Juan Capistrano-based Blues soccer club.

Most prep players who also compete for youth soccer clubs do so only in the off-season because the California Interscholastic Federation prohibits athletes from playing on their club teams during the high school season. But coaches for the Blues women’s team say they have become increasingly successful lately at persuading players to forsake their high school seasons.

They say playing for the Blues, who practice only once a week and consist primarily of former college players, provides better training than high school and makes a player more attractive to college coaches.

“If someone is very good at [soccer] and competing at the highest levels, then the avenue to take is to play club,” said Larry Draluck, who oversees all teams for the Blues and coaches several of the club’s girls’ teams. “Ideally, and selfishly, the solution is to do away with high school soccer.”

Coaches of local boys’ club teams agree.

George Mitton of the North Huntington Beach soccer club said he has been trying to convince his age 19-and-under boys’ team to play in a men’s league during the winter for years, but the boys have always voted to disband for a few months to play for their high schools.

Matt Kinney of the Mission Viejo Pateadores soccer club likewise would like to see his boys’ team play together year-round.

“We would make a lot of enemies of high school coaches, but when you’re doing things for the betterment of the players, that shouldn’t stop you,” Kinney said. “With [Major League Soccer] coming, the next step for soccer is to better develop our youth. Private clubs do that, and high schools don’t do that as well.”

Many local high school coaches dispute that, however, and are becoming alarmed at what they say is a ferocious effort by club coaches--Blues coaches in particular--to siphon off the best high school talent for their teams. There were only two high school girls who played with the Blues women’s team last year, compared to this year’s seven.

“There’s going to be more next year,” Draluck said.

Although the women’s Blues are only one team, the situation illustrates the large-scale animosity between many high school and club coaches.

“All it really is [for] is so a club can get their hooks into a player and totally keep them to themselves,” said Chuck Morales, the girls’ coach at Santa Margarita.

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Jesme, 16, quit ballet at 5 because she said it was “boring.” She fell in love with the speed of soccer.

“I just ran around everyone,” she said.

She helped the Blues’ 15-and-under team to the state final and to the Western Regional final this spring. Jesme attributes her success to Draluck, who said he has developed more than 60 NCAA Division I players.

“He knows how to teach soccer,” Jesme said. “He’s a perfectionist.”

The fruit of a young club soccer player’s labor often is measured in progress in the Olympic Development Program, which funnels thousands of players through district, state and regional levels in order to select a few for positions on national teams.

Jesme, a center midfielder, has fared well, advancing to the state level the last three years and to the regional level last summer.

“She’s a Picasso, she’s a natural, she’s a Mozart,” Draluck said. “She’s one of these [talents] that is just born.”

Santa Margarita’s Morales disagreed. He did not select Jesme for the Eagle varsity last year when she was a freshman.

“She just wasn’t technically ready or physically ready,” he said.

Jesme, 5-foot-5 and 105 pounds, attended one day of varsity tryouts this season but decided not to continue.

“Soccer at the high school is a lot [of time] and school is important to me and I want to keep my grades up,” she said.

Top-ranked Santa Margarita, well-stocked with many of the area’s best youth club players, did not worry about her leaving.

Jesme’s mother, Carol, said she hopes playing club soccer will make her daughter more attractive to college coaches.

“We spend $450 a month for [Santa Margarita] high school and hopefully she’s getting a good education,” Carol said. “And hopefully [club] will pay off where she’ll get a [college] scholarship.”

It costs a young player $600, not including uniforms and travel expenses, for one season with the Blues. Members of the women’s Blues pay about $100 per season, not including travel expenses, and a sponsor provides uniforms. Youth players do not have to pay additional money for playing with the women’s team.

Al Mistri, Cal State Fullerton men’s and women’s soccer coach, said a red flag is raised in his mind when he sees a player has given up high school to play club, wondering if they have a “snobbish attitude.”

Still, even under optimal conditions, Mistri said, club competition will always be stronger because they can draw talent from a larger area.

Tad Bobak, who founded the Blues’ women’s team in 1985 and remains its coach, led the UC Santa Barbara women’s team to a 100-43-7 record from 1987 to 1994. He has drawn many Santa Barbara alumnae to the Blues, including All-Americans Karen Nance, who attended Capistrano Valley High, Lisa Busch, who is the San Clemente High girls’ coach, and Laurie Hill.

Past participants on the women’s Blues have included Carin Gabarra and Julie Foudy, members of the U.S. women’s national team that won the world championship in 1991 and placed third last year.

Part of the attraction for so many high school players of playing for the women’s Blues this season were the Blues’ three scheduled matches against the U.S. national team.

In September, Edison’s Itri joined the Blues in two games against the national team at the U.S. Olympic training center in Chula Vista.

“It was really exciting,” Itri said. “I realized that they were really in shape and they could just run up and down forever. . . . They loved the sport.”

Last month, the national team was scheduled to play two more games against the Blues at Chula Vista, but the U.S. team was missing nine of its stars, including Michelle Akers and Mia Hamm, because of contract disputes. National team Coach Tony DiCicco borrowed several Blues players, including Itri, for the game.

“Just putting on the uniform was a big thing, and then it was just different caliber than anything I have ever played with before,” Itri said. “I just learned to play simple and when you get in the higher levels you can’t dribble through everybody.”

Itri, who has made a verbal commitment to attend Stanford this fall, has her focus set on making the national team. That goal is realistic; she has advanced to the highest levels of the Olympic Development Program and won a national championship in 1994 with the Fountain Valley Spirit under-18 team.

Itri, a center midfielder, was a first-team, All-Sunset League selection for Edison her freshman and sophomore year but had a season-ending knee injury in the first game of her junior season. “Your chances of getting injured in high school are quadrupled,” Kinney said. “You see so many injuries in high school from awkward tackles from [unskilled] players.”

Itri hopes practicing with the former college players on the women’s Blues will better prepare her for the NCAA Division I level.

“In the physical aspects, in the fitness and the quickness of it, the people that I’m playing with [on the women’s Blues] have a lot of experience and I think they could push me,” she said.

But there is a price to be paid for that experience.

“I go watch [Edison] play and I feel bad sometimes, but I have to do what is going to make me get ready for [NCAA] Division I,” she said.

Sometimes there is a backlash against players who have abandoned their high school teams for club.

Josh McLeish, a junior at San Clemente High, planned to play throughout the winter with the San Diego Nomads under-17 team. The club team ended up disbanding, however, because some of the players wanted to play for their high schools. When McLeish tried to return to the Triton varsity last month, Coach Michael Pronier put it to a team vote and McLeish was allowed to return, but only by a narrow margin. He also was forced to sit out several games as a penance.

Morales, who coached all levels at the Mission Viejo soccer club for the last 15 years before taking over at Santa Margarita last season, said the high school level of play is catching up to the club.

“The quality of coaching at the high school level has greatly increased, so that no longer is one of the criteria [for club being better than high school] because I have seen some lousy club coaches,” he said. “Uninformed, unknowledgeable [club] coaches would laugh [at high school] and that’s why I stayed so long out of high school, because I thought the better players were in club and and why would I waste my time in high school? I have to tell you I was wrong, dead wrong.”

High school coaches also say that the school environment provides something the club environment could never provide.

Said Kinney, who also coaches the Canyon High girls’ team: “In club [soccer], you don’t have these big-time rivalries where the [freshmen and sophomore] girls are making cookies for you.”

Said Capistrano Valley girls’ Coach Hamid Sedehi: “The only thing I have against [giving up high school] is that high school is once in a lifetime and you should enjoy it.”

Jill Pearson is a junior transfer at El Modena High, where she is enjoying her first year of high school soccer. She played no sports as a freshman at Pacifica and played for the women’s Blues last season.

“I wanted to get involved with the high school. I just wanted to do teenage stuff, I guess, instead of being with adults,” she said.

Some say that athletes shouldn’t have to choose. Draluck said that the California Youth Soccer Assn. should take the initiative, which might force the CIF to change its rule that prohibits athletes from playing on outside teams during the season.

“If the [CYSA] had the courage they would lengthen their season and go straight through high school,” he said. “I think you would find the serious players would continue to play club.”

The Salsa, a now-defunct professional soccer team in the A-League, organized an under-19 boys’ club team in 1994 that played year-round and was based in Fullerton.

The Salsa’s under-19 team won the College Coaches Classic in Austin, Tex., a club tournament held during Southern California’s high school soccer season. Octavio Zambrano, the Salsa’s under-19 coach, said that many of his players received inquiries from college coaches because of exposure in that tournament. They include Candido Lopez, formerly of Santa Ana High, who led Rancho Santiago College to the state championship this season, and Junior Gonzalez, formerly of Rancho Cucamonga High, who is a freshman at UCLA.

The Coaches Classic is sponsored by the prestigious Austin Capitals soccer club, which plays year-round. In the past, most Capital players gave up their high school eligibility to play with the club, but the University Interscholastic League, the governing body of high school athletics in Texas, changed its rules last year to allow players to play both simultaneously.

In California, CIF officials say that school administrators are opposed to allowing athletes to participate on outside teams during the high school season.

But Dean Crowley, CIF Southern Section commissioner, said he would like to see more discretion given to coaches.

“If the high school coach doesn’t care and the parents and the youngster want to, why not?” he said.