The Soccer Gap : Players Fight for Space to Play While Park Depts. Allocate Resources to More ‘Traditional’ Sports

Four dozen sweating men shoved themselves into a hot airless room recently trying to win something almost as rare as the big prize in the California Lottery--practice time on one of the city’s soccer fields.

There are thousands of organized soccer players in Los Angeles, but only 55 fields for them to play on. And so each year, the city holds a soccer lottery to determine who gets the best practice times--and who gets to practice at all.

“There is an overwhelming, burgeoning demand for soccer facilities” in the inner city, according to Sheldon Jensen, assistant general manager of the city Recreation and Parks Department for the inner-city areas. “At any number of facilities not designed for soccer, soccer is being played: in picnic areas in Elysian Park, in Griffith Park, in every one of our smaller parks. On virtually any facility we have with a grassy area, you can pick up a practice game.”

Adds Tom LaBonge, a field deputy for City Council President John Ferraro: “The inner city is park poor and that’s where a lot of the soccer players are. And soccer takes lots of land.”

The demand is so great and the fields in metropolitan Los Angeles so few that some sports officials believe even if money were available, building several hundred new playing areas would not be sufficient. But the problem is larger and older than that.

Slow to Catch Up

Local governments still direct most of their limited post-Proposition 13 budgets for organized sports to the traditional, and more popular, American games such as football, basketball, softball and baseball. They have been slow to catch up with the changing interests and needs of those who now dwell in what began two centuries ago as the Village of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula.

Jerry Fecht, a Moorpark College professor who has studied youth soccer and works with a firm that markets corporate-sponsored amateur soccer, said that to many recreation leaders “soccer is an alien sport and does not have the priority in their thinking that ‘American’ sports like baseball and football have.”

City and county recreation officials admit that the local government sports bureaucracies are trained in the traditional American sports and are largely unfamiliar with soccer.

The city maintains only one designated soccer field in the inner city, where hundreds of thousands of children and adults regard soccer as their primary sport.

The remainder of the 55 grassy areas where soccer is officially permitted, including two mini-fields appealing only to primary-grade children, are scattered across the city with concentrations in the western San Fernando Valley and the Westside. Most areas are multipurpose fields that also serve as softball and baseball outfields.

By contrast, the city Recreation and Parks Department maintains 295 tennis courts and 244 softball/baseball diamonds, many featuring lights, grandstands and other amenities.

At Encino’s Balboa Park, you can stand in a shady parking lot and observe city government’s sports priorities:

Deserted Baseball Fields

Looking south are four ball diamonds with grandstands, the infields dragged smooth, the base lines straight, the outfields lush. On a late Saturday afternoon, though, the diamonds are deserted.

To the north are 13 soccer fields of varying sizes, the boundary lines meandering squiggles, the greenswards mostly gone to weeds mottled with bare dirt beaten rock-hard by stampeding soccer players. There are no grandstands. Casual soccer games are under way on three of the better fields.

Citywide municipal sports officials estimate there are at least five times as many players in organized adult softball as there are in soccer. But as city soccer director Larry Brenner points out, there are almost five times as many ball diamonds as soccer fields.

Charlene Hernandez, who coordinates permits for organized sports groups using county parks in the foothills along the northern edge of the San Gabriel Valley, said demand for soccer so outstrips supply that her area needs its 10 soccer fields expanded to at least 15.

Instantly Filled

Bill de la Garza, a county parks regional operations manager, said that if the Board of Supervisors built 100 more soccer fields just in East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley all would be instantly filled with weekend soccer players.

The president of the city Recreation and Parks Commission, attorney and investor Richard J. Riordan, predicts that “we could easily fill 10 or 15 fields” in the central city, South-Central area and East Los Angeles. Others, like Brenner, say Riordan’s estimate is much too low.

In the past decade, organized youth soccer has become exceptionally popular in suburban areas across the country. Nationwide, more than 1.5 million children participate in organized soccer teams not affiliated with schools. In Southern California alone, the recreation-oriented American Youth Soccer Organization and the competition-oriented U.S. Youth Soccer Assn. field about 175,000 youngsters, most of them in predominantly Anglo suburban areas. Countless other independent leagues also field youth teams.

And the numbers are moving upwards, pushed in part by the Amateur Athletic Foundation, which has pumped $150,000 into organizing youth soccer in low-income areas of Los Angeles in the past two years. The money went to the AYSO, which in cooperation with the United Neighborhoods Organization and the South Central Organizing Committee established youth soccer teams, and to several independent soccer leagues.

Organizing soccer teams in neighborhoods short of parkland creates even more demand for new soccer fields. But meeting that demand will create new problems.

When soccer fields are scarce, building new ones means they will attract players from a wide area. But many homeowners don’t want outsiders coming into their neighborhoods. Several years ago, 400 Eastsiders signed petitions opposing soccer fields at Ascot Reservoir, fearing they would increase traffic and attract gangs.

Also, the areas where demand for soccer fields is greatest are already developed. In the central city large tracts of vacant land are rare and usually expensive.

Brenner and other recreation officials said that one way to get more playing fields would be greater use of grassy areas owned by the the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Most school yards are locked after hours and on weekends, but organized soccer teams can arrange, through a system of permits and fees, to get limited access to these fields.

Some soccer proponents contend that while the county encourages youth soccer programs organized by parents, top management of the city Recreation and Parks Department is openly hostile, especially in poor neighborhoods, to such volunteer efforts.

“We are political pawns in the overall picture of (youth sports),” said Daniel Ohayon, whom the AYSO hired to bring organized soccer to inner-city neighborhoods. “In low-income areas of the city it seems our program has hurt some egos in the (city) Recreation and Parks Department . . . that’s how the city expressed it to me and this has confirmed my view that the (city) has people who are anti-soccer . . . the county is much more cooperative.”

Father Dennis O’Neil of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Mid-Wilshire and three other volunteers who have successfully organized youth soccer leagues in the inner city say that top management of the city Recreation and Parks Department tries to force football on immigrants from Mexico and Central America by organizing football teams, but not soccer teams.

“The Recreation and Parks Department is not interested in empowering the community, in giving it what it wants,” O’Neil said. “Their attitude is that ‘we’re professionals and we will tell the community what it needs.’ ”

Officials of the city Recreation and Parks Department and the county Parks and Recreation Department acknowledge that their sports bureaucracies are filled with recreation professionals who know the traditional American sports, but neither understand soccer nor get training in that game.

‘That’s Their Job’

Sheldon Jensen, assistant general manager of the city Recreation and Parks Department metropolitan region, said recreation directors are required to create softball/baseball and flag football leagues. “That’s their job. That’s what they are required to do,” Jensen said.

But no similar directive has been issued for organizing soccer. Jensen said that is because volunteer groups, such as the AYSO, have organized teams and “if they are there and are doing a good job then we are not going to compete with them.”

“We don’t run youth soccer because we were late on the ball and AYSO got in there ahead of us,” said Jane Rasco, a principal recreation supervisor on the city’s Westside.

However, the city organizes youth baseball teams, even in neighborhoods where there are successful Little League programs run by volunteers.

The city’s tilt toward traditional American sports is also reflected in its policies on fees for night-lights and extra-hours staffing.

When the city government sponsors a youth sports activity such as flag football or softball it does not charge extra fees for night-lights or staffing. But when outsiders run a program they must pay $10 per hour for lights and another $10 for staff.

Fees in Poor Community

Thus in Pacific Palisades, one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, youngsters do not pay for extra staff or, if needed, lights for flag football, Rasco said. But at Normandie Park in Mid-Wilshire, an area so poor that nearly every school child qualifies for a free lunch, the city imposes night-light and staffing fees for youth soccer without exception, collecting $3,600 annually from the poor, because the community runs the program.

“We feel the city should not charge fees, especially in low-income areas, so long as the park is full of people and being used,” the AYSO’s Ohayon said. He said the city derives significant benefit from parent-run programs such as youth soccer, which he noted dissuade gangs and drug dealers, among other bad elements, from taking over the parks.

Jensen, the assistant general manager, said he cannot waive fees even in poor areas because the budget cannot absorb these costs. However, Jensen said he agreed last week to ask Riordan, the commission president, and others to examine the fee problem.

In East Los Angeles, the county is developing a soccer complex with grandstands and other amenities, hoping it will become a major center for amateur soccer tournaments in Southern California.

But despite this showcase facility, recreation officials say that overall their budgets are so tight since voters passed Prop. 13 in 1978 that there is hardly enough money to maintain the facilities they have and little money, if any, to meet changing interests by building and maintaining new soccer fields.

Not everyone familiar with the issues believes more soccer fields are the answer.

Judith Pinero, vice president for grants and programs at the Amateur Athletic Foundation, believes more attention should be focused on alternatives that take less space, such as mini-soccer, which uses a less lively ball and can be played indoors.

Tim Thompson, executive director of the AYSO, said local officials with tight budgets also should look to developing dirt or clay soccer fields, which are much less expensive to maintain instead of “perpetuating the English ethic of playing soccer on lawns.”

Building on DWP Land

Meanwhile, there is talk of building new soccer fields at four sites in the city.

Councilman Richard Alatorre wants to develop a day-care and recreation center complex including as many as 10 soccer fields on land owned by the Department of Water and Power at Ascot Reservoir on the Eastside.

According to Riordan, Deputy Mayor Mike Gage and others, Mayor Tom Bradley has agreed to the concept. But attorney Rick Caruso, president of the city Board of Water and Power Commissioners, said this agreement must still pass through an environmental review process. A similar Ascot Reservoir plan died several years ago because of opposition from homeowners concerned about traffic and worried that soccer fields would attract gangs.

Riordan said he is confident those problems can be resolved and that funds to cover capital costs can be obtained. A more serious obstacle, Riordan said, was paying continuing maintenance costs.

Soccer fields could also be built on an isolated 26-acre triangle of vacant Griffith Park flatland along the Los Angeles River near the Golden State and Ventura freeways. This field might be clay instead of grass, LaBonge said, adding that if this site is developed he wants to see the fenced Griffith Park soccer field returned to multipurpose use, primarily for neighborhood residents.

A Bitter Rivalry

The city is also working on building two fields in the Hansen Dam area in the San Fernando Valley.

In Montecito Heights, northeast of downtown, land and $40,000 are available from a fund under joint control of the City Council and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency, to build a soccer field.

But the bitter rivalry between two Democratic politicians apparently stands in the way.

Last May 4, Assemblyman Richard Polanco wrote to Councilwoman Gloria Molina that he had arranged the money.

Richard Ginevan, who oversees city park construction projects, said in an interview that he had work crews ready to go to Montecito Heights. But Ginevan said nothing was done because Molina did not give her approval. (City departments, as matter of policy, do not build projects without explicit approval from the area’s City Council member.)

“I don’t understand why it wasn’t built,” Polanco said, adding that he hoped Molina had not stalled the project just because he proposed it.

Molina said she agreed with the statement of Alma Martinez, her press secretary, that “Polanco is not going to dictate the councilwoman’s priorities.”

Martinez said a Molina aide was erroneously told by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy that the proposed soccer field was outside its jurisdiction and thus funds were not available. Molina’s office passed this on to a Polanco aide, after which Molina and Polanco dropped the matter.

Meanwhile the city landscape crews have gone to rebuilding golf course greens. But Ginevan said that if Molina approves, work could start early next year.