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Baca First Piece to the Puzzle
by Matt Zimmerman, Long Beach Press-Telegram
October 24, 2006
Two minutes away from obscurity, Sara Baca made her move.
Then a junior at Buena High in Ventura, Baca had not impressed the new
Olympic Development Program coach during tryouts in her age group. Watching
the final minutes of the last day of tryouts, coach Mauricio Ingrassia
had crossed her off the list.
It was at that point that Baca, a defender, picked up the ball in the
back and proceeded to dribble past most of the opposing team - and the
goalie - before scoring. And like a professor who had rethought his original
work, Ingrassia made a little correction.
"She's not the type of kid that's going to show well in a couple
of tryouyts, she's the type of kid that you're going to appreciate over
10 games," said Ingrassia, whose LBSU (13-3-1, 4-0-1) team faces
Cal State Fullerton tonight at 8 p.m. on the road. "Just a steady
kid that gives you so much, but not the type of kid that you're going
to pick out of a crowd right off the bat."
When Ingrassia was hired as Long Beach State women's soccer coach in late
May, 2004, he quickly targeted Baca as a cornerstone of his new program.
While on a recruiting trip to a tournament in Houston, he sent her an
e-mail.
His first e-mail to a recruit as LBSU coach.
"I spelled it out for her, my vision. She's not the type of player
who's the flashiest kid, but she's the type of player that you put in
there to make things work," Ingrassia said. "I explained to
her that I really value that, and I think she can help us . . . She was
the first one to believe in what we were trying to do."
As Baca says, after her commitment "dominoes began to fall."
Forwards Kim Silos, Dana Farquhar and Sahar Haghdan had all played either
club or ODP with Baca, and also committed to the program.
"I thought, we all played together so they wouldn't be out of the
comfort zone," Baca, said. "And we all pretty much had Mauricio
or seen him coach, so I didn't think the coaching would be an issue. I
had faith from the start that we would be fine."
This season, another former Baca teammate joined the program. Yeraldy
Hurtado, a speedy forward who won a CIF Southern Section title with Baca
in 2005, is now a freshman on the team.
Like Baca's group, Hurtado has contributed quickly. And like when she
was a confident freshman at Buena, Hurtado has sometimes incurred the
wrath of her friend.
"She's yelled at me a couple times, but it's just Baca," Hurtado
said. "I respect her. She's like an older sister. On the field, she's
like the leader."
Playing at defensive midfield on a team with plenty of high scorers, Baca
is somewhat anonymous."They really don't get noticed a lot, it's
always the person who scores," Farquhar said of defenders. "People
miss what they do, they don't talk about defenders in the back, like "Oh,
she stopped this play."
Yet, things are looking up. Baca noted that when she works the ticket
counter at the Walter Pyramid or at Blair Field, some people do recognize
her as part of the group that has brought soccer to its highest level
at LBSU.
"I want the team to win, and I want the program to build. And I'll
do whatever it takes," Baca, a kinesiology major, said. "I've
always been doing the dirty work. I kind of like it."
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