LJ b soccer 2, Crawford 3

The Vikings' Noah Brown makes a tackle
versus Crawford in the first half.
(Photo by Ed Piper)
 

By Ed Piper

La Jolla's boys soccer team thought it had a license on international flavor the last two years: players who speak German (Luis and Nick Goehler), Castilian Spanish (Pablo Jativa), and Brazilian Portuguese (Marco Furlanis), besides the many Spanish-speakers who grew up here in San Diego (including assistant coach Victor Zendejas) and the English the whole roster speaks.

Furlanis, a team captain, gets partial credit for Italian, too, which his father speaks. But Marco has admitted his Italiano is not close to his Portuguese, which he got from his mom's Rio de Janeiro roots.

Well, welcome to the real world. At their tough Eastern League game at home Fri., Feb. 9, the Vikings met their linguistic match: Crawford, which is undergoing a kind of renaissance, sports players from six language groups besides English, according to Athletic Director Kelcie Butcher, who was intently pacing the visitors' sideline, along with her two coaches, during the tight, competitive game.

The Colts won the game, 3-2, making a 1-0 first-half lead hold up with two goals in the second half to match the resurgent hosts. Even more, in the last minutes of the opening period, Crawford goalie Raul Reyes stymied, first, Marco Furlanis, then Luis Goehler, making diving saves on penalty kicks from point-blank range to preserve the shutout through the first half.

The Colts speak Arabic, Swahili, Somali (from Somalia), Karenni (from the Karen people of Myanmar/Burma), Spanish, of course, and other languages this reporter can't recall or name. (I think Butcher said there is another language from Myanmar represented.)

My favorite was Hector "Lalo" Ramirez, a bilingual junior midfielder. (My nickname in Spanish is "Lalo", roughly equivalent to "Ed" or "Eddie".)

"I think we have more languages than Hoover High," said Abdi Osman, the assistant, who rattled off No le jales la camisa ("Don't pull his jersey") to one of his players during a pressurized first period.

A little history to the two teams' matchup is that La Jolla defeated 1-0 in the playoffs the year the Vikings won the CIF Division 3 title, 2015-16. That title moved LJHS up a division to Division 2, where their opponents have not fallen as willingly, though the Vikings' talent is as good or better than ever.

"Marcos (Gonzales) and Victor have stabilized the program," said an observer Friday at the Crawford game. That's a true statement. For many years, the soccer program had a new coach either every year or every other year. There was no continuity, and though the talent pool was good, including many travel team players, the players didn't have one, unified system to play under at the school.