| UCI Full of So Cal Talent |
By: Mike Besack
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| Posted: Friday, May 7, 2010 2:23 pm |
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| UCI women's coach Scott Juniper |
If Scott Juniper’s calculations are correct, the UC Irvine soccer facility will soon have the kind of equality that’d make Title IX’s creators blush with envy.
“We’re a couple of years behind the men,” the UCI women’s head coach says. “They’re showing what can be done at UCI.”
If that’s true, then look out. With growing community awareness mixed in with a boatload of local talent, Juniper knows his Anteater women’s program could be on the cusp of joining their male counterparts.
Juniper, after all, is going into his fourth season as the Anteater women’s coach and knows full well what’s happening across the hall in UCI’s athletic department.
Juniper, as well as the rest of Orange County, Southern California and the U.S., for that matter, are rightfully impressed with what’s happening at UC Irvine’s soccer program — spearheaded by recent leaps and bounds made by the now-nationally-recognized men’s program.
And like his counterpart, UCI men’s coach George Kuntz, Juniper is looking to build his Anteater women by using So Cal talent. All seven members of Juniper’s 2010 recruiting class hail from Southern California.
He plans on using that So Cal talent to eventually reach Anteater men’s status and turn UCI into a full-blown national soccer powerhouse.
Last year was the fourth-straight season the UCI men were ranked in the national Top 20 polls during the regular season. But the past two seasons, out of Kuntz’s 15 years helming the Anteater men, were unparalleled in school history.
The ‘Eaters won back-to-back Big West Tournament Championships and were seeded both times in the NCAA tournament — reaching the Sweet 16 in ’08. They also went 30-9-6 over those two years and carved out a school-record-tying 15-win total in ’09.
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| UCI men's head coach George Kuntz (above) and the 2009 UCI men's championship team (below). |
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Kuntz’s crew graduated six seniors from that team and reloads in 2010, like Juniper, with what he believes is one of his best recruiting classes ever.
Put it this way: UC Irvine is actually turning Orange County into a soccer hotbed.
You’re probably thinking — isn’t it already?
Yes, some of (OK, most of) the nation’s best soccer clubs are in Southern California and OC in particular. And yes, So Cal’s Coast Soccer League hosts something like (cough, cough) 170 clubs.
OK, coaches seem to travel the world over to come here more than anywhere else in the U.S., and kids’ parents drive them through county after county and spend dollar over dollar to play for them.
More notable U.S. soccer names come from roads paved over former orange groves than, arguably, anywhere else east of Upland.
And what The Real Housewives of Orange County did for soccer, and the region’s image, is immeasurable.
Just kidding.
But perhaps more buzz than ever is surrounding soccer in So Cal, thanks in no small part to the national attention created by what’s developing on the UC Irvine soccer fields. National playoff seedings and home field sell-out crowds are no longer unusual on the Anteater pitch.
“We’re seeing a lot more support from the local community,” Juniper says of the overall program. “People are getting excited about what we’re doing. The community is starting to recognize that there’s a nationally competitive program in their backyard.”
Juniper looks to build on that in the near future on the women’s side, and So Cal talent is his building block.
The coach played and studied at the University of Bristol in the UK before shifting to the University of Bath where he also played and received a Master’s degree. He recently was named one of the age group head coaches for the Cal South Region IV Olympic Development Program, and also is the director of coaching for Irvine Premier Soccer Club (formerly North Irvine SC).
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| Juniper sees a hot bed of talent in So Cal. |
Those are just a couple of tools he’ll pull from his belt to help build his Anteaters, which hold a record of 31-23-6 over his first three years and reached the 2009 Big West Tournament semifinals after playing the regular season to a 12-7-2 record.
Because of the talent he’s seen by working on the club and regional ODP levels, Juniper’s confident that SoCal is about the only market where he needs to shop.
“Every year the Southern California teams dominate at every age group,” Juniper says of ODP play. “That’s not by accident. The competition here in So Cal and in Orange County in particular is at such a high level because the players who grow up there are exposed to high-level clubs which are trying to develop players the right way.
“You expose those players to that level of competition and you’ve got a recipe to develop players in programs year after year.”
Juniper’s latest crop of seven So Cal ’10 recruits hope to pave the way. They range from high-profile players like San Diego Surf star Zuri Walker to more under-the-radar-type prospects such as Nicole Gilbert from Westlake HS in Thousand Oaks.
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| UCI women welcome the new recruits with open arms. |
Fellow Surf player Jordan Bruce joins Walker, whose brother, Amani, is a senior on the Anteater men’s team. Juniper’s reach extends a bit north of L.A. with keeper Alisa Reich, from Moorpark and Eagles SC and Jordyn Utvich from Valencia and Real So Cal (she previously played for Slammers FC).
Natasha Afshar (Slammers FC/St. Margaret’s HS) and Zoya Farzaneh (ISC Strikers/Irvine HS) stamp the Anteaters’ OC footprint in the 2010 recruiting class.
Juniper estimates 95 percent of the program’s players, at one time or another, played AYSO, developed from there into the local club system, and eventually into scholarship athletes.
That’s the kind of example Juniper believes can help his Anteater program turn the corner.
“[Club and rec players] can see the players as role models now playing in college,” he said. “For those young kids and their families to see that cycle of development, I think it inspires them to see what’s at the end of it.”
***All photos courtesy of UCI Athletics
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