BY GREG SELBER

MCALLEN – Coach Pat Arney likes to divide the 10-minute halftime period into its own halves, giving the girls the first five minutes to be with themselves, so to speak, without the gregarious veteran mentor rattling at them. It’s a time where the veterans turn into coaches, or sometimes, the kids just rest.

“At this stage, they know what they’re doing, I want them to relax a little, without me there,” said the McAllen soccer coach. “They need a little alone time, do ya know what I mean?”

He can trust his team to do what it needs to do at the half, the same way he can also intuit that his Lady Bulldog powerhouse is going to pass well, have great touches, and spread the field in order to slice and dice the opposing team to shreds, like it’s done over 300 times in Arney’s stellar 14-year career at the school. Two reasons for this certainty at The Mac, where winning is as constant as the sun rising in the morning: talent, and club soccer.

The program has won eight district titles, never finishing lower than second in the Upper Valley league. The Lady ‘Dogs have been to the regional tournament five times, and were the first local unit to break through with an upstate win there, over San Antonio Reagan back in 2007. That’s the talent, including legendary standouts Sarah Stansell, Mary Martinez and too many others to name and do them credit.

And to a player, outside of a few, those names on the all-time list were not just maybes, they were full-time soccer stars who came up learning the game from an early age, playing year-around to hone their skills with dedication and determination on one of the two area club teams, the Border Bandits (the Celtics are the other such squad).

In an area where there is gobs of talent in girls’ soccer, Arney thinks that it’s time for club soccer to really take off.

“What do we have, like 36 high schools down here?” said Arney Monday at Memorial Stadium, as his team warmed up for its District 30-5A opener against Rio Grande City. It was a simply gorgeous afternoon, sunny and cool. “And we only have two club teams. We just need more of them, I think each city should have its own instead of having to send their kids to McAllen or the Celtics.”

The reason for this native Minnesotan’s idea is plain: the more time girls put into the sport, the more they get out of it.

“The upstate club teams, they don’t really like to come down here, we always have to travel to play,” said the coach. “It would be better for the Valley if we had more club teams, because the benefits of having them are obvious.”

Cohesion is one of the main things accruing from the specialist path. Club teams play dozens of games in the offseason, giving kids extra time on the field outside varsity competition, and the longer they play together, the better they become as a unit once the Valley high school season begins.

Arney uses his own team as a case in point.

“They play together all year, so they don’t even have to think about their passes, they know their teammates are going to be there,” he explained. “You can’t beat that togetherness. We can play a variety of styles depending on the competition because I know my girls have the fundamentals down and have been working on things all year. They can play multiple positions and they know what to do when they get the ball.”

And the enhanced skill level pays off in the big games.

“You can’t think that you are going to be able to go up to Houston, Austin or Dallas and win against those teams that have girls who are club kids,” he stressed. “I mean, when you have kids who play three months a year, it just isn’t going to happen normally against teams that have played for 12 months. That’s why I want to develop more club teams. Plus, it will save us money and travel time, too. It’s just something that needs to happen in the Valley.”

BACK FOR MORE

For the Lady Bulldogs, 2007 was a high-water mark, but don’t imagine that Arney’s band was resting on those laurels. They returned to the Sweet 16 last year but could not get past perennial power Reagan again; The Mac has battled back and forth with Harlingen South for over a decade for the title of the Valley’s best. Coach Omar Pedraza’s Lady Hawks have 12 straight deep playoff trips under their belt and can boast just as much overall success and production of stars who’ve gone on to college. The two coaching rivals seem joined at the hip in their quest to bring legitimacy to the local game, and even shared Coach of the Year honors on last year’s All-Valley soccer squad.

In 2009-10, both programs are looking stout once again, though each suffered significant graduation losses, the Lady Bulldogs losing six senior starters and the Lady Hawks eight.

But on the weekend before league play began Valleywide, The Mac put on a dazzling display of ability that had to have the rest of the teams shaking their heads, again. The Lady ‘Dogs hosted a showcase at their place, inviting Edinburg, Brownsville Pace, and Laredo LBJ for a two-day brawl. After scoring 15 goals, allowing none, McAllen had wasted the other three hopefuls. Bad.

“Those were some good teams, but I have to admit, we were playing awesome soccer last weekend,” said Arney, a garrulous and likeable fellow who knows the game inside and out and connects well with his kids. “I have been a little surprised at how well we have done so far, really, but again, the girls have been doing this for so long, they rarely take time out for other sports, it’s soccer all the way, and you can tell that when you watch them play.”

The signature moment of the showcase came against Pace, a playoff regular from 32-5A that came into the event with just two losses on the year. In slam-bang fashion, senior Megan Ochoa fed dynamite forward Tara Sparks, and just 10 seconds after the tip, the Lady Bulldogs had a 1-0 lead.

“It’s so hard to come back from something like that,” said Arney, shaking his head. “We should know, because it happened to us earlier in the season.”

The Mac’s 9-2-1 record (they blasted Rio unmercifully Monday with seven goals in the first half, three in the first eight minutes) includes blemishes against San Antonio Warren and Dripping Springs; the first came in the title tilt of the Bulldogs’ own tournament and the other one came after state-ranked Dripping Springs notched a goal inside the first minute of the match.

“I’m not saying the game would have been totally different if we hadn’t given up that quick one,” he admitted. “But psychologically, it is tough for a team to rebound from a start like that.”

The Lady Bulldogs shouldn’t have to worry about getting in a lightning-fast hole this season in 30-5A, especially with the wonderful pair of Ochoa and Sparks. The former is a physically dominant 5-foot-9 bruiser who also has marvelous ball skills. Arney called her a “power forward out there. I keep telling her, she’s not Allen Iverson, she’s the Shack and I want her to dunk it down out there. But she can play on ball very well, good feet, and she really takes it to the other teams with strength.”

The latter is a tiny flier with great fake-and-shoot chops. Sparks showed what she is all about in the first half against outmatched Rio, deking her girl off the ball deep right, coming back with a quick flip of the ball into range, and firing one lefty to the near corner a step ahead of the Lady Rattlers goalkeeper. She runs like the wind, handles as if the ball’s been on her foot from birth, and can reverse to play in the back because she’s got the requisite toughness and anticipation despite a lack of size.

But again, with so many club soccer veterans on hand every season, McAllen doesn’t have to count on those two senior studs to do all the work. There are a number of younger kids on the roster who are bent on making their mark after the team went through a trying graduation transition, including midfield comer Allyson Duarte, stopper Sam Lopez, freshman keeper Kalie Vanness, promising soph Dani Flores, and speedy Jessica Vela.

That’s not all, folks. There are also two girls looking to follow in the footsteps of family members who were great players for the program.

Jessica Peisen and Perri Hochema know all about Big Dog Soccer, as they grew up watching a long line of older sisters do their thing for Arney’s Army. Now they are on the big club and asserting themselves with excellent results as the season wears on.

In league play, the Lady Bulldogs are looking at Sharyland as a potential roadblock, and will get their first taste of what the experienced Lady Rattlers have to offer next Tuesday, after a Friday try against Donna. Arney thinks that his crew has a good chance to do what it always does, compete for the title and then start pondering the drive north. North, where the playoff combatants are paced by a plethora of club vets, rugged killers who have eaten, drunk, and slept year-around soccer for 10 years or sometimes more.

If the Lady ‘Dogs are going to keep up their string of success, it will be because of the aforementioned twin edges: talent and 24-7, 365-day experience. And one other X-factor is of course Arney himself, even though the Midwesterner will downplay his impact on the program’s storied past. But he cannot fail to take some of the credit for the winning tradition the school has established.

At one point during Monday’s scrum with Rio, Ochoa, one of the more outgoing and engaging members of the squad (unless you happen to be an enemy defender, that is), walked by the coach as he was talking and tapped him on the left shoulder. Even though this is the oldest trick in the book, probably first pulled off by Eve against Adam, Arney looked back toward the tap. Ochoa, wry smile on her face, had already walked away.

“You got me that time,” he smirked, and the star attacker giggled.

“See, it’s a great group of girls….They are really fun to work with, even Megan the know-it-all,” he laughed, eyeing his prized enforcer with a playful stare.

So Arney can count on his kids for some high-jinx, because after all, a season is a grind that tests the fortitude and endurance of even the long-time clubber. He can also count, when the fun stuff is over, on his girls hitting the turf with super skill, knowledge of what it takes to become successful, and the ambition to work their butts off to keep that tradition on fire.

They come to the field, after all, having already navigated their way through several complete seasons before the real one even began. Point well taken.

Tags: mcallen high soccer, rio grande valley