Quakes stir up controversy… seriously, they do

By: Melissa | December 12th, 2007

It turns out, a few of the High School players selected to participate in the Quakes’ upcoming Combine are in danger of losing their amateur status and possibly getting kicked off their school teams. Seems a bit harsh but according to Marie Ishida of the California Interscholastic Federation, the Quakes violated a bylaw which says high school students cannot participate in a professional team’s tryout between Sept. 15 and June 15 without written permission from their principal and the tryout must include no more than five players. But Quakes’ executive vice president David Alioto doesn’t think the tryout tour broke any rules because the tryouts were for spots on the “developmental team” only which apparently means the non-professional, non-paying, in it for the glory, and hopefully a free t-shirt team (so my previous assumption that “developmental” is really a fancier term for “reserves” is not correct). Ishida says she will be investigating this matter further and making decisions on whether the players who participated will have to sit out the rest of their amateur careers. Fortunately for the kids, she doesn’t think she’ll rule against them because the bylaw is a bit fuzzy. The article I link to above says the Quakes will give the CIF a full list of the High School tryout participants but according to Soccer Silicon Valley, that is not accurate:

Despite press reports stating that the Quakes will be turning over a list of Tryout Tour participants to the California Interscholastic Federation, the team has not determined if that will happen or not. We also learned that several high school coaches and principals were consulted before the Tryout Tour was planned and that none of them were aware that special permission was needed for students who wanted to participate, so it seems from our perspective that this whole situation caught everyone off guard.

Also, of note, is a comment in different SSV post from earlier today. Apparently, Jorge Flores, the winner of the Chivas USA reality tv show and current member of the US U-20 National team, originally rejected the Chivas contract because he was still in high school and wanted to retain his amateur status for a little bit longer. But it looks like everything worked out well for him so I’m going to assume that our potential Bay Area soccer amateur Quakes are going to come out of this controversy A-OK.