Soccer royalty
Talent, right coaching blend have Bellarmine eyeing another crown
With two weeks to play in the regular season, the Bellarmine College Prep soccer team has its goals within reach.
Under a first-year head coach who played for the program and second-year assistant Brandi Chastain — yes, that Brandi Chastain — the Bells should be among the favorites when the Open Division of the Central Coast Section boys soccer playoffs makes its debut later this month.
But the team knows there is still work to be done and crucial games ahead before it can repeat as West Catholic Athletic League champions and win another section crown. (Bellarmine was the CCS’s Division I champion last season).
And work is what the Bells were doing at a recent practice. Under a bright blue sky, Chastain — the former U.S. women’s team icon — directed the players in a drill near the goal as they prepared for a game the next day. Bellarmine began this week with just one loss but that has come in a recent stretch in which the team has gone 0-1-2 after winning 11 times with three ties in its first 14 matches. Entering play Wednesday, the Bells, St. Francis and Archbishop Mitty shared the WCAL lead with 17 points apiece.
Conor Salcido, who graduated from Bellarmine in 2007, took over as the Bells’ head coach this season after coaching the school’s freshman team to league titles the previous three years. Salcido knows he inherited a talented squad — he coached many of the players at the lower level — but one that is still learning to play at a consistently high pace.
“It’s tough, especially at the high-school level, to make sure your guys know that just because it’s Bellarmine, you just don’t show up and you win,” Salcido said. “You’ve got to still perform. You’ve got to still play to your highest level, not the other team’s highest level.”
The Bells are trying to make sure that happens. At practice last week, Chastain’s strong voice could be heard as the team went through its drills.
Some of the players were not born when Chastain made the clinching penalty kick in a shootout against China to win the 1999 women’s World Cup, but they have checked out the replay on the Internet.
“It’s awesome having Brandi,” defender Marte Formico said. “Someone who has been that caliber of a player, that has been in a World Cup, it’s just really cool to have her mentor you and give you her little insights and tips on things you can do — small things that can propel your game to the never level.”
Having Chastain around is cool for Salcido, too. “I don’t think we’ve had a disagreement all year,” he said. “It’s great having her on board, a different voice.”
When Salcido tries to communicate to the players, he noted, “I’ll pull them to the side and talk to them. She has no problem yelling across the field, which is great. We coach differently, which in turn works.”
Chastain, a 1986 Mitty graduate, said she has enjoyed the experience, adding that as a mother of two boys the job has given her a platform to show that women can be in leadership roles of young men.
“That was a personal reason for me to be out here,” she said. “Professionally, this is an environment that I hadn’t coached in, and I wanted to challenge myself and see if what I felt I knew about soccer applied to this environment, what does and doesn’t work and how can my experiences influence the environment.”
When Chastain joined the team last season, she said, her Mitty roots were a topic of conversation among the older Bellarmine players.
“Initially, the seniors from last year kind of gave me a hard time about it but in a respectful way,” Chastain said. “If we all stayed in the little cocoon that we grew up in, the world would be a much different place than it is now. I loved my experience at Mitty, and I am a Monarch all the way.
“But what I am doing out here is to help these young men further their soccer knowledge or potentially their soccer career in college. That has nothing to do with where I went to high school.”
With the right mix of coaches and lots of talent — 180 players tried out for the program’s three levels — Bellarmine might finish on top again.