Diego Garcia, the Centurions’ 5 feet 10 inches tall, 160-pound goalkeeper, made some pretty serious saves against St. Augustine, the No. 1 soccer team in San Diego County.
Coach Chris Tolles (pronounced “tolls”) and his hard-working crew — training on the upper turf field above the stadium on the University City campus on many a cold afternoon — “knew that Saints score a lot of goals,” in the words of Garcia. “So we 100-percent prepared for this game (Jan. 24). We used a completely different strategy from other games: we would normally attack, but this time we let them come to us, but we would give them no room (in front of the goal Garcia defends).”
The senior compared the five-defender alignment to “one of those rides that swing back and forth,” his index finger tracing a loop. With the normal three center backs augmented by wings on each side, “One defender goes up and applies pressure” on the side St. Augustine brought the ball down. Then, squeezed, the opponent might pass the ball around to the opposite side of the field, and the wing there would respond, as the Centurion defense swung back to meet the threat.
To cut the tension, the final result was a draw, 1-1, which against the best teams in soccer is like a win. UC’s Silas Quirino, a solid 5 feet 10 inches tall junior midfielder, scored the equalizer in the 19th minute of the second half off an assist by junior Fisher Thompson — on the Saints’ home turf on their tiny campus in North Park. The draw, midway through the Western League schedule, sets up an interesting dynamic for the Centurions and Tolles (a seven-year head coach), as they now sit at 0-2-3 in the league, 5-7-5 overall. They could get into the CIF playoffs with barely a league win.
Two other reasons UCHS is in the fight include striker Everardo “Evie” Diaz de Leon IV and Anthony Jimenez, a center midfielder “who is a silent leader and just does everything” on the field, in Tolles’ words. Evie is a third-year varsity senior captain, while Tony is a four-year varsity veteran.
“We’re preparing well,” Diaz de Leon IV says. Evie remembers that when his father, Evie III, introduced him to the sport at a young age, he immediately took to it. His father was a speedy striker, too.
Tony, also 18, admits he’s not the “loudest communicator,” but as Diaz de Leon describes him, “He’s like a role model” on the team. “Teammates want to follow in his footsteps to do what he does.” Jimenez emulates “Rodri,” a Manchester City center midfielder who stars for Spain. “He does his job well. When someone in the middle of the field does well, it helps the whole team,” is pretty much Tony’s basic philosophy.
In contrast, Garcia, the goalkeeper, idolizes Iker Casillas, a Spanish goalie of similar height “who isn’t 6 feet 4 inches tall. Wouldn’t you rather have a shorter player who is better, than a taller one who is mediocre?”
