Westwood High soccer team has 6 players from abroad

December 21, 2004

At a browned-out grass field in the heart of the city, about 20 teenage boys skillfully kick the ball around.

There is no reason to believe they are different than any other high school soccer team. They even get in a tight circle right before kickoff to chant, like many other teams do.

That’s when you hear the difference. It’s actually a fútbol team.

"Olé! Olé, olé, olé. Olé, olé. Olé! Olé, olé, olé. Olé, olé! Westwood!"

They look like any high school team except that the language spoken on the field, by the coach and even in the stands, isn’t English.

With players from Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil, the Westwood High School boys soccer team is a mini United Nations.

"We feel we have the Western Hemisphere very well covered," coach Ron Cole said.

There are six players from foreign countries on the Westwood varsity. Only two speak some English, the rest are "English as a Second Language" students. So when assistant coach Cesar Macias barks out instructions, the former Mexican club player is also translating into Spanish.

"There are enough Spanish speakers but we are still having a problem communicating because of the style of play," Macias said.

That is what separates the players.

"Cruce! Cruce!"

The players shout for a crossing pass at senior forward Xavier Larco, who loves to dribble and shoot. He is far from his home in Quito, Ecuador, nearly 3,200 miles away, and maybe farther from the way he played the game in his country.

"The Ecuadorian style is faster, more along the sidelines," he says in Spanish. "More longer passes."

The South American style generally stresses fundamentals and a more fluid style.

"It’s very interesting because there are distinct forms of play but together we make a great team," said senior midfielder Juan Arce, who is almost as far from home as his teammate. It’s 3,100 miles to Cali, Colombia.

Marcelo Paiva is with his family for the holidays and has not been with the team the last two weeks. If he had gone home — Sao Paulo, Brazil — he would have had to put in 5,839 miles.

"Communication is hard but soccer has its own language," said captain David Richardson, whose blond hair stands out more than usual on this team. "The

more diverse the better. I go to Westwood; we are used to it."

It sounds like a melting pot.

"They have made a lot of friends," said Cole, who started the Westwood program as a club team in 1978. "The foreign exchange kids now are in a nice place. It’s a pseudo family, a place where they can fit in. We are just trying to make sure everyone is legal. We had a lot of credential checks to find transcripts from Colombia, transcripts from Ecuador."

Cole has some idea why these kids didn’t end up at one of the other soccer powers in the East Valley.

"Westwood is a unique school," he said. "We have a lot of children here from different countries. I guess they come here because we have a huge Hispanic population. . . . Therefore, they come here because their friends or cousins are here so it’s a draw to the other Hispanic nations."

As a result of this international influence, Westwood is 2-2-2 overall and 2-0-1 in the East Valley Region after three weeks of play and has the definite signs of a non-American team.

"We have been having to adapt their style to the American ball," Cole said.

"It’s funny. The Brazilian boy, I told him all through the preseason, ‘You have to get rougher. They are going to push and shove.’ And he said, ‘OK, Coach. OK, Coach.’ He came out of the first half of the first game and he says, ‘Coach, I see what you mean about American soccer — they push me all the time.’ "

In the Americas, coaches put a high priority on skills such as ball control and passing.

In Thursday’s 2-2 draw with perennial power Dobson, the Warriors were a bit tentative but stayed within themselves.

Driven on by the shouts of "push it" in Spanish, Larco got a few chances on Thursday but failed to find the net. He scored four goals in a junior varsity match earlier in the year but hasn’t found the shooting touch yet with the varsity.

Westwood has had to depend on two local boys, senior midfielder Richardson, who grew up playing soccer in Germany where his family lived on a military base, and junior forward Joseph Raoofi, to create their offensive chances.

There really aren’t breakdowns in communication most of the time, although it’s a challenge for arquero — that’s goalkeeper — Gilberto Camacho of Sinaloa, Mexico.

"It’s a struggle to communicate because I’m the goalkeeper and I have an American defense that doesn’t speak Spanish," the senior said.

Camacho is joined on the team by two other Mexican players, Sergio Diaz and Leonardo Lopez.

So what is it like for this team?

"It’s just like watching soccer on the Spanish channel," Cole said.

"They like each other. It took a while to get them all together because they didn’t know each other. We didn’t realize that there were different styles in different countries — so the Brazilian wasn’t used to the Venezuelan, wasn’t used to the Ecuadorian, wasn’t used to the Colombian. . . . When we first got to know each other their names were a lot harder for people to pick up (so) we would say, ‘Hey Colombia, Hey Venezuela, Hey Ecuador.’ "

In addition to being competitive, the players also said they have a mission to teach their philosophy.

That philosophy?

"That soccer is a sport to have fun in, not to keep people apart," said Arce, who has scored a goal already this season. "It is a sport of diversion."

And not division.