Boys reinstated, Shaw retrofits won’t be ready, Scoobies set up their out of office replies

By: Melissa | December 13th, 2007

The controversy is (almost) over! A story over at Inside Bay Area reports that the High School students benched by the California Interscholastic Federation after attending the Quakes’ tryout tour and supposedly putting their amateur status in danger, were just reinstated. Whew. Unfortunately, Marie Ishida of the CIF is not letting this one go. Yesterday, Quakes management sent her department a list of all the high school players who participated and despite allowing the boys who came forward on their own back on their school teams, she’s determined to inspect the list and presumably call out the remaining boys who didn’t speak up. She says: “Those kids who self-reported have been waiting for a week now. I didn’t want my inability to get the list to hinder them. If I was going to make them eligible, I wanted to make it as quick as I could.” Ok, the fine folks over at Soccer Silicon Valley very respectfully call this mess a sign of growth for the team and its presence in the area. Personally, I think this Ishida lady is a straight bitch with too much time on her hands. Isn’t there an education crisis in California to be worrying about right now? Don’t we want our students going to school, participating in after school programs, and furthering their development and all that?

Right… moving on. Anyone who is following the 2008 schedule, knows the Quakes are still trying to sort out that first game for the first week of the season. The New York opener fell through because The Shaw won’t be ready in time and The A’s have dibs on The Oakland Coliseum. There is the possibility the Quakes will sit out the first week (making the *gulp* Galaxy match at the HDC their first game of the season) but I hope they come to terms on an away game against New York at the Meadowlands for March 29th. Also, Lew Wolff recently made the rounds to talk to the press about stadium progress. He says The Shaw will be the official stadium for the next three seasons because the fancypants SSS won’t be ready until 2011. He also says he is open to the possibility of partnering with the 49ers to use their future Santa Clara stadium for the more popular soccer games. So after 2010 its buh bye Oaktown. Oh well, I’m certainly going to appreciate the current situation while it lasts.

Alright, I’ve got my former boss on IM trying to figure out how to set up an ssh tunnel so I need to go help him. But before I take off, I want to update you all on the Scoobies and what they’re up to. In an interview in the Merc, Lew let us all know their travel plans in the coming weeks to check out foreign players. Doyle is off to England, Yallop to Mexico, and Russell to Costa Rica. I’d love to come up with a cool Justice League analogy here or something similar but I’m multitasking so its not going to happen. Either way, its time to remind Our Gang to save those receipts in order to get reimbursed on their return. Oh pragmatism, you are one hell of a party pooper.

(And congrats to the Bay Area college students invited to the MLS Combine! I’d like to add that my former school is not represented on that list but, well, we weren’t really known for sports so I’m not surprised.)