Tuesday Time Machine -- 1989 Soccer Champions!

Good ol' 1989! Amazing how fast time flies. Thirty-one years ago, minimum wage was a whopping $3.35/hour, TV shows Seinfeld and The Simpson's were in their first seasons, the average price for a gallon of gas was 99 cents and yours truly was a proud and recent graduate of Newport Harbor High School.

Up the road from NHHS, the Orange Coast College men's and women's soccer teams were making their own special history as BOTH Pirate teams won the state championship at El Camino College on Nov. 14, 1989, capturing the school's first state title for each sport on the same day!

For the OCC women, this win was poetic justice after a heartbreaking trip to the state finals the year before. It was the first-ever state championship, held at Chabot College and the Pirates took on Fresno City and lost in overtime, 2-1, handing Coast its first lost of the entire season (21-1-1). 

"We felt like we were robbed the year before because we actually two goals called back, which made the loss even that much harder to swallow," said longtime OCC coach Barbara Bond. "To be able to go back and play for another title was something the players really wanted. We had a bunch of players from that '88 team back for '89 so we wanted to win this one real bad."

The road to that championship was not easy as the Pirates dealt with a plethora of setbacks along the way ... injuries, ineligibility, illness ... you name it, the Pirates went through it. Even as late as the championship contest against Consumnes River, one of OCC's best players, 19-goal scorer and conference MVP Michelle Forgette, had to sit out the title match with tonsillitis. 

"I remember we had a bunch of players step up when some of our best players went down," Bond said. "It really showed the depth of that team. I really loved those girls for what they did that year. Everyone filled in and played huge roles for us."

After capturing the South Coast Conference title, Coast rolled through the playoffs with wins over Long Beach (6-2), El Camino (2-1) and Bakersfield (5-1) to return to the title match against the Chiefs. After a scoreless first half, the Pirates got the all-important first (and last) goal of the match when team MVP Kim Sutton found the back of the net in the 54th minute of play. 

That would be all the Pirates would need as goalkeeper Julie Williams blanked the Chiefs for all 90 minutes. But, her key stops came in the first half when she stopped a 1-on-1 breakaway and then later, punched a shot heading into the top corner over the net to preserve the shutout. 

"Williams was the MVP of the (state championship) game," Bond told Daily Pilot reporter Rich Dunn afterwards. 

Coast outshot Cosumnes River, 17-9, and capped off another remarkable season with a 13-4-4 record. In addition to winning the team's first state title and fifth conference championship in six seasons, it was also career win No. 100 for Bond, a fixture to the OCC Athletic Department for over three decades. 

On the men's side, Coast started was led by longtime head coach Laird Hayes, but the former Pirate skipper had a key co-pilot that helped bring this program to prominence. "The brains of this outfit was definitely not me," Hayes said. "OCC had a great assistant coach since we founded the program in Mauricio Claure. He really ran that program. Basically, I was there to make sure the field didn't catch on fire. He was really a gifted coach, who was smart as a whip. He figured out our tactics and plans to the players that we that particular year."

With the help of a good youth pipeline that included the North Huntington Beach Soccer Club, Coast began to see its program really begin to blossom. "We were able to get some quality athletes -- kids that might not be four-year ready, either athletically or academically," Hayes said. 

Coast was loaded up front with Orange Empire Conference Most Valuable Player, Andy Strouse, who scored 21 goals in 1989 and fellow sniper Paul Oldham, who earned first-team, All-OEC honors as well. "Andy was the most competitive player I ever coached," Hayes said of Strouse. "He ended up getting a scholarship to play at powerhouse SMU after his time at Coast and he went on to play at the national level too. "In a good way, Paul was selfish -- all he wanted to do was score goals and his entire focus on the field was putting the ball in the back of the net. You need a guy like that out there sometimes!"

But the X-factor for the Pirates came from freshman goalkeeper Ken Langworthy, who came to OCC from La Habra HS. "He was going to go to El Camino, but their coach, Norm Jackson, told him they were pretty solid at goalkeeper and to perhaps try his hand at OCC. He was fearless out there ... an absolute stud. There's no way we win without him. We won state again in 1991 and he was our goalkeeper that year too. He was absolutely our ace in the hole."

In the playoffs, Coast earned a trip to the State Final Four with a 2-1 win over East L.A., a team that rolled past the Pirates, 4-1, earlier in the season. "I think they thought they were going to kick our (butt), but we managed to catch them on a down day and beat them at their place. We really had a gritty team. They refused to come out if they were here and they had a real dogged determination to win."

Following a 1-0 win over American River in the state semifinals, Coast took on Fresno City College for all the marbles. 

Literally an hour after watching the women's team capture the state title, it was the men's turn, and, much like the women, it was a ragged first half of play that saw no goals for either side. In fact, it was the FCC Rams who had the better of things, but the Pirates kept in scoreless thanks to the inspired play of Langworthy, who had five big saves over the first 45 minutes. "FCC had a kid that was one of the fastest kids on the planet," Hayes recalled. "Mauricio put one of our best defenders -- Matt Sandel -- to mark him and neutralize him and we managed to do that. But Langworthy came up HUGE for us early on and kept us in the contest while we got things figured out at halftime."

Just two minutes into the second half, OCC found the back of the net when Oldham used a nice feed from teammate Pat Callaghan and gave Coast a 1-0 lead. 

It stayed that way until the 66th minute, when Strouse scored twice over the next four minutes, giving the Pirates a "comfortable" 3-0 lead ... or so they thought.

"I remember with about 10 minutes left, Mauricio and I talked about getting everyone into the contest, so we pulled Langworthy in goal and before you know it, Fresno scored two quick goals to make things interesting again," Hayes said. "We put him back in after that, but Fresno had all of the momentum and really came after us. But he made a couple of crucial stops in the final few minutes and helped preserve the win for us."

The win capped off an 18-4-2 record for the Pirates, who followed this title up with another one in 1991. But, the 1989 team was the club that really put OCC Soccer on the map. 

"It was a great blend of kids that were not only outstanding soccer players, but they were hard-working, great kids too," Hayes said.