Of all Whitman sports rivalries, the Whitman-BCC rivalry is arguably the most intense. But for the boys soccer teams from both schools, it’s possible to put aside that rivalry for a pick-up game of soccer.
Athletes from both teams usually play at the Little Flower Astroturf soccer field after school. The teams are a mix of players from both schools, with the number of people in attendance ranging anywhere from four to 20 depending on the time of year.
Seniors Sam Lilek, Scott Gerfen, Dominick Yin and former player Paul Torres (’09) originally started the pick-up games. Eventually word spread and slowly more players showed up. The BCC players didn’t start playing at the field until last year.
“We used to play a lot at Lynbrook Park, and for whatever reason –I guess the field was bad – we decided turf was the best place to go,” BCC junior Tim McKay says. “Paul Torres would be there every time, and we started to go a lot.”
McKay says that he normally finds out if there’s a game going on by talking to his teammates at school. Mondays are the best day for the games, he adds, because most of the players have practices on the other days of the week.
Gerfen attributes the decreased tension at the pick-up games to the different setting.
“With club soccer, a lot of people from Whitman and BCC play on the same team,” Gerfen says. “There was a lot of rivalry over the summer though as the [school] teams were trying to get ready for the season.”
The summer pick-up games weren’t made up of mixed teams, but were actual Whitman vs. BCC scrimmages. In addition to the current high school players, Whitman graduates also showed up at the games.
There are more pick-up activities at the Little Flower field than just these soccer games. In addition to casual games of other sports, occasionally younger soccer players scrimmage there.
“We’ll see freshmen or middle school kids playing there and we play with them,” senior Zack Khalifa says. “Some of them are pretty good.”
The Little Flower field isn’t technically open for public use, but most of the time there isn’t a problem with the boys using the field.
“There’ve been a few times when we’ve been kicked off,” Lilek says. “But I’ve talked to some people who work there and they say it’s fine [to play there].
When the boys are allowed to play, school pride isn’t entirely forgotten.
“We trash talk all the time on the field about how we won states and they didn’t,” Khalifa says.
Junior James Cahill says that there hasn’t been as much talking lately about the past season, though.
“That was last year,” he says. “We need to focus on this year.”
Cahill adds that playing over the summer might have contributed to the Viking’s successful season.
“The games are pretty important to building team chemistry,” he said. “We played a lot [at the pick-up games] over the summer and that turned out well.”
