Youth teams’ rival goalie: Fuel costs

By Timothy Pratt

Thursday, June 19, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Six youth soccer teams are the latest casualties of the unrelenting surge in fuel prices.

They’re grounded in the Las Vegas Valley while an annual regional tournament continues apace in Hawaii.

The teens became Nevada champions in May but couldn’t afford the airfare to face peers from other states. Dozens of starry-eyed players lost the chance of being seen by a college or pro scout or coach, or, at least, the chance of tasting greater glory.

Others made it to the tournament, but by skin-of-the-teeth exploits — a coach’s maxing out his corporate credit card, parents’ borrowing against their retirement plans.

The tale may be cautionary, a bellwether of troubles for youth sports in general if fuel prices continue to rise.

Those troubles could be seen Monday on the face of 14-year-old Daniel Acero as he flipped channels between two televised soccer matches. His 150 pounds slumped into a cushioned chair as he resigned himself to watching, instead of playing, the game he loves.

His team and a girls team backed out of the regional tournament at the last minute. Four other teams said in May they couldn’t afford the high prices to Hawaii soon after they were crowned Nevada’s best.

“That’s never happened,” said Guy Hobbs, president of the Nevada Youth Soccer Association, the official agency representing the state in the regional event.

He said Montana and Wyoming stayed away from the tournament altogether for the same reason, while Idaho sent fewer teams than in years past.

Members of the soccer association have begun considering what it all means for the future.

“It’s getting harder to travel far away,” Hobbs said. So other tournaments in places such as North Carolina, Colorado and Florida may soon seem out of reach for youth soccer teams — which, again, doesn’t mean just fewer trophies. It translates to fewer options for young Nevadans, in soccer and other sports.

“We want them to be seen by college coaches,” Hobbs said. “But you’re going to be seeing a lot more traveling to closer places like California — and a lot more carpooling.”

Al La Rocque, recently retired, founded the valley’s first Amateur Athletic Union boys basketball team in 1983. He says youth basketball coaches and managers are abuzz about the issue as plans are set for this summer’s Big Time, Main Event and Adidas Super 64 tournaments, events that together draw more than 800 teams from across the country and dozens of college coaches and scouts.

Some teams, he says, “are not sure how they’re going to make it this year,” meaning their players would miss out on what he calls “a critical recruiting event.”

Acero had hoped to catch the eye of a recruiter in Hawaii. In May a parent of a player on one of the championship teams told the state soccer association of a plane that could get as many as 172 people to the regional event for a good price. The association passed along the information to coaches, who passed it along to parents. Tens of thousands of dollars exchanged hands. Car washes and taco sales were held to help pay the airfare. Weeks went by.

But, says Kristen A. Conforti, broker at Jetset Charter, the Florida-based company behind the charter, the deal never closed. “They told me they were still trying to raise money from the parents,” she says.

Finally, last week, she got a call saying the deal was on. But in the two months since Jetset had begun talking about the charter, the price for the plane had gone from $1,527 round-trip to $1,968 — in part, she says, because of the cost of fuel.

So just days before what was supposed to be the departure date, the charter deal fell apart. Money was returned.

Three teams were able to rebound, stitching together seats on different flights and paying more than $1,000 per ticket. The Nevada Devils’ coach, Amado Perez, discovered that the packing company he owns, Pro Pak, had a generous limit on its corporate credit card. So he charged $28,000. He’s unsure how he’ll be paid back, especially because some of the team members’ parents are out-of-work residential construction workers.

On Monday, the day the Devils won their first game in Hawaii, Geraldo Acero sat near his son at their North Las Vegas home. He traveled in his mind back to when he was 15 and qualified for a professional soccer team in Guadalajara, five hours south of his home. His mother didn’t let him go, arguing it was too far.

“That was my dream, to play for a team,” the 47-year-old commercial construction worker says.

He has learned a lesson from the recent bout with gas prices and shifting flight deals.

He wants the parents on his team to start raising money now for next year.

“We can’t afford to let go of this team. Not this one.”