Folk Family Has a Toehold in Two Sports

The Folk family of Woodland Hills is torn between its passion for futbol and football.

Brothers Nick, 17, Greg, 14, and Erik, 12, are dedicated club soccer players who insist they’d play in the World Cup rather than the Super Bowl, if given the chance.

But Nick, a senior at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High, is facing a difficult decision: He’s all-Southern Section in soccer and football. Arizona has offered him a scholarship to become its kicker; San Francisco wants him to play soccer. The Folks are not much different from many families in the U.S., where children start out playing soccer but begin trying other sports before they reach their teenage years.

The Folks’ father, Tony, was born in Austria, emigrated from Germany when he was 4 and played football and soccer growing up. He and his wife, Kathy, a pediatrician, viewed soccer as the ideal energy release for their boys.

“We’ve always looked at sports as giving our kids an opportunity to do something besides sitting in front of a TV,” Tony said.

Added Kathy: “Do you know how many times I’ve said, ‘Don’t play with the ball in the house.’ That’s my favorite line.”

The boys started playing soccer at age 5 and never stopped through broken lamps and broken arms. When high school arrived, football became another option. Nick started kicking and Greg followed.

Last season, Nick made field goals of 52 and 50 yards in one game. He also kicked a game-winning 32-yard field goal with 12 seconds left to defeat La Canada St. Francis.

Greg, a freshman, kicked a 43-yard field goal for the junior varsity. And Erik, a seventh-grader, was a kicker for his grammar school team. He might become the first Folk to play a position other than kicker.

“[Those] two don’t want to get hit,” the feisty 5-foot-1, 100-pound Erik said.

Kathy was the consummate soccer mom this past winter, coordinating carpools and transportation issues. All three boys competed for their club soccer and school football teams simultaneously.

Those who wanted to create chaos in the Folk family only needed to remove the calendar on the refrigerator. The dates informed everyone when practices and games would be held. “I went to England and Germany before Hell Week [at football practice],” Nick said. “Greg went to Brazil for 10 days, and he’s going to Mexico in a couple of weeks and will miss a couple high school [soccer] games.”

During the Southern Section football quarterfinals, Nick was in San Diego for a club soccer tournament, drove to Palmdale on a Friday night to kick for Notre Dame, then returned to San Diego the next morning. Greg missed the game to participate in a national soccer camp in Florida.

It goes on and on, football vs. soccer.

“A lot of people think soccer is a wuss sport and it’s not,” Nick said. “You get bumps and bruises everywhere. You get elbows in the head, you get kicked in the ankles, your shins, your shoulder, everywhere.”

Nick helped Notre Dame’s soccer team reach the Division IV semifinals last season. Greg is a starter there this season. Erik plays on a youth team.

They practice in the family backyard, shooting at a regulation goal. If the ball is kicked too far, however, it goes into a neighbor’s yard, forcing the boys to take quick action. Guess who they send over the fence to retrieve the ball and avoid the neighbor’s dog?

Erik, of course.

“We help him over and hope he lives,” Nick said.

Each brother is an honors student. The pressure to excel in school comes from a family in which two grandparents, two uncles and an aunt are doctors, with Harvard, UCLA and California among the schools they attended. Their father is an accountant. Their mother was a high school valedictorian.

The boys know not to fake illness to avoid going to school, not with a mother who’s a pediatrician who has seen every trick in the book.

“Even if we’re throwing up, my mom goes, ‘Go to school, you’re fine,’” Nick said. “You can’t fool her.”

So what’s Nick going to do, play soccer or football in college?

“I love soccer more than I love football, but I see more opportunities for football,” he said.

Football scholarships pay 100% of college costs. Soccer scholarships routinely are split among many players on a team. Then there’s the chance of playing professionally.

Nick took his recruiting trip to Arizona last weekend and decided to accept the football scholarship offer.

Next up is Greg, who’s considered a better soccer player than Nick. He’ll have three years to decide which sport is best for him.

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.