Oceanside’s coach of coaches sees bright future ahead at new El Corazon fields

Oceanside —  On a breezy afternoon last week, only a handful of souls occupied the sweeping El Corazon plateau where 55 acres of sod were laid earlier this year, creating one of the largest pieces of configurable athletic turf to be found anywhere.

Two workers, tiny on the far horizon of grass, were chalking out lines for a lacrosse tournament — the field’s first official event — when a number of city officials arrived for a lunchtime pickup game of soccer.

The group included former City Manager Peter Weiss and several other notable city staff, and around 12:30 p.m., one of them jogged over to Frank Zimmerman to say hello.

“Playability inspection, you know?” said the man after a handshake. “It’s gotta be done.”

Zimmerman is the director of coaching for the Oceanside Breakers, and he has spent more than a decade advocating for the expansive complex that is finally open for play as of this month.

“In 2003, the city called some town hall meetings asking for ideas,” Zimmerman recalled when we met at El Corazon on Thursday. “I went to every meeting and showed them that a soccer complex would be a good use for part of this space.”

Growing up in Oceanside, Zimmerman would practice on balding fields behind local elementary schools, and he has seen the effects of overuse lay waste to many a soccer pitch.

Working with a number of others who wanted to see this spacious field built, his goal was to convince city officials that a big enough soccer facility would be of great economic benefit.

It worked, and soon, there was a master plan outlining tens of millions of dollars’ worth of development — including soccer fields — in the huge swath of land bordered by Oceanside Boulevard, El Camino Real, Mesa Drive and Rancho Del Oro.

“I was like, wow, I’m going to be dead before that happens,” Zimmerman said, chuckling. “So these guys, eight years ago, started working out how to really make it happen. They gave our club a phone call.”

“These guys” were four partners — Mike Connerley, Pat Collins, Colton Sudberry and Charlie Abdi — who saw the possibility to open the field before the hotels and storefronts and parks were funded.

On Thursday, Connerley and Collins pulled up in a golf cart and squinted across the field that they’ve spent the better part of the year building.

It’s basic enough, this overwhelming length of turf: 52 acres in one unbroken piece, capable of holding 22 full-size soccer fields, and fronted by a 3.5-acre parcel of turf that the city wanted to make available for community use.

“You really can’t appreciate it until you get out to the middle and truly see how big it is and how beautiful this area is,” Collins told me, adding that he spent a decade looking for a spot like this. “I talked to everybody — Sempra, the Marine base, Chula Vista, the city of San Diego. This was about the only place” for such an ambitious project.

“Everybody mistakes it for a landfill, but it never was,” Collins said.

It was a sand mine: “They dug all the sand out and pumped all the clay back. So that’s what was here — big tailing ponds.”

Connerley said one of the first orders of business will be to relocate the popular Thanksgiving Surf Cup from Del Mar to Oceanside.

“We hold our events right now at the Polo Club, and we cut almost twice as many teams as we accept, so this will give us an opportunity to expand and accept more teams,” he said.

To get the project up and running, Collins, Connerley and their two other partners formed a limited partnership called SoCal Sports Complex, which is under lease with the city to operate the field.

As part of the deal, the Breakers won’t have to pay rent, and Zimmerman said the club will spend about 40 percent of its practices and games here.

“We need about 10 to 12 fields for the size club we are now, and I know we’re going to grow,” he said. “The nice thing is, we’ll get to use five of these fields every week, and (17) will be rested. Whereas, everywhere else, we’re using them, using them, using them, and if we’re not careful, they’ll be beat to dirt.”

2014 has been a banner year for Zimmerman, by all accounts.

In February, he earned his 200th victory as the longest-serving soccer coach at Oceanside High School, placing him in rare company in the prep sports world.

Zimmerman was on hand, camera at the ready, when the first piece of sod was laid at El Corazon in August, and he was here, again, when two-thirds of the turf had been put down.

He’s not ashamed to admit he got emotional at the sight.

“I was talking with someone from our club and I excused myself, got in the truck and got choked up,” he told me. “It’s almost like you can’t believe it.”

Finally, last weekend, his cherished soccer club, the Breakers, became the first to play the game in this place — the first of thousands who will enjoy matches here in the years to come.

“I played at Oceanside High, grew up playing for the Oceanside Breakers, and I played at MiraCosta,” he told me. “Now I coach at all three of them. It’s kind of cool.”

Plenty more remains to be built in the 465-acre El Corazon Park. The city’s specific plan calls for a pair of hotels, commercial space and 164 acres of habitat interlaced with walking trails.

But this one glorious field is enough for Zimmerman.

“The quality of that turf is unmatched,” he said with a broad smile. “I’m all in.”