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Girls soccer team to play in Brazil
(by Brian Farrell - June 17, 2008)
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Photos By Brian Farrell
The North Jersey All-Stars girls soccer team is headed to for its second annual tour of the East Coast State of Espirito Santo from June 26 to July 8. The team will visit six cities and play nine games. Front row from left: freshman Kristy Larsen (Mahwah High School), sophomore Allison Sokolik (Mahwah), sophomore Emily Secor (Mahwah), junior Brielle Heitman (Mahwah) and senior Chelsea Wuesthoff (Randolph). Middle row: junior Christine Carosotto (Glen Rock), junior Ashley Tourso (Glen Rock), junior Sam Trotta (Glen Rock), junior Mimi Kocela (Waldwick) and junior Victoria Berg (Emerson). Back row: Danielle D'Avanzo (Sparta), junior Alexis Banks (Teaneck), junior Rosemary Garganta (Kearny), Dave Heitman (Mahwah), general manager of the team, junior Janelle Biagini (Wyckoff, Ramapo), junior Sarah Royse (Northvale, Old Tappan) and junior Nicolle Sanchez (Lyndhurst, DePaul).
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After being welcomed like rock stars last August when it made its inaugural trip to Brazil, the North Jersey All-Stars girls soccer team returns next week for its second tour along the huge country’s East Coast with four more cities to play in and three more games to play. The tour is from June 26 to July 8.
Last year, the North Jersey All-Stars were the first American soccer team to play in the cities of Sao Mateus (110,000 population) and Jaguare (30,000), which are north of Rio de Janeiro but still way down on Brazil’s coastline. This year, the team will also play in the cities of Sao Gabriel (47,000), Nova Venecia (25,000), Montonha (16,000) and Vitoria (1,000,000), expecting capacity crowds.
Dave Heitman, who has been the head wrestling coach at Mahwah High School the past five seasons, is the architect and general manager of the team and has once again assembled a talented group of high school soccer players, mostly from Bergen County.
The North Jersey All-Stars have nine games scheduled, five on grass and four indoors, which is called futsol in . Futsol is played on a surface not much larger than a basketball court with five players, including the goalkeeper, and with a smaller ball that is heavy and does not bounce. In , a lot of the youngsters learn to play soccer in futsol fashion, since there are not many regulation soccer fields to play on and there are no Little Leagues or club teams like there are in .
Of the 17 girls that went to Brazil last year, six are returning – Mahwah junior Brielle Heitman, Ramapo High School junior Janelle Biagini of Wyckoff, Waldwick junior Mimi Kocela, Northern Valley/Old Tappan junior Sarah Royse of Northvale, DePaul Catholic junior Nicolle Sanchez of Lyndhurst and Randolph senior Chelsea Wuesthoff.
There are 16 girls on the team, and the new players are freshman Kristy Larsen (Mahwah), sophomore Allison Sokolik (Mahwah), sophomore Emily Secor (Mahwah), junior Christine Carosotto (Glen Rock), junior Ashley Tourso (Glen Rock), junior Sam Trotta (Glen Rock), junior Victoria Berg (Emerson), junior Alexis Banks (Teaneck), junior Danielle D'Avanzo (Sparta) and junior Rosemary Garganta (Kearny).
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Victoria Berg, a junior at Emerson High School, is a member of the North Jersey All-Stars girls soccer team. Berg has been a three-year starter at goalkeeper for the Emerson High School girls soccer team.
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Heitman acquired the services of professional soccer player Roberto Ferman, a native of , to be his team’s coach last year. The former New York/New Jersey Cosmos player, a Mahwah resident, is conducting practice with the team each Monday night at the Waldwick Superdome. Ferman will again be accompanying the team to as will Mahwah’s Karen Hartigan, who has been a national certified athletic trainer since 1982.
The 16 girls will be sharply and smartly attired. For the second year in a row, Inserra [Shop-Rite] Supermarkets has made a substantial donation to the purchase of nine sets of jerseys for each girl with their insignia and an American flag on it. This year, Pepsi-Cola has also made a donation to the purchase of the jerseys. The 16 girls, however, do not return to the with their nine sets of jerseys. They each choose a Brazilian player in each game and give their jersey to her, like they did last year.
“We are honored to wear Shop-Rite’s name,” Heitman said. “Without their help, it would be very hard to put together the quality trip that we put together. Pepsi has also stepped up to the plate.”
The girls, staff and parents each receive lime green travel shirts, essential while traveling in busy airports to make it easier to keep track of everyone. The shirts will have the team’s name, the American flag and the Brazilian cities in which the girls will play.
And, just like last year, the North Jersey All-Stars bring a program with them to distribute to their Brazilian counterparts and sports administration officials of each city they visit. It is a booklet containing a still photo and an action photo of each girl with a profile of the player – her hometown, high school and soccer background, including achievements and honors.
This year, the program is being printed by the company that Ron Berg, the father of the team’s goalkeeper, Victoria, works for, Hummel Printing and Mailing of Union, which will be celebrating its 125th anniversary next year.
“Our president, John Hummel, was kind enough to donate all the paper, the services and the time in the printing of the programs,” Ron Berg said. “I showed him what they had done last year, and he said, ‘Let’s do something really nice for the kids’. We have some creative people working on putting the booklets together.”
“My wife then came up with the idea of having player cards to hand out at the games,” Berg said. “John and I worked together as to how to best design and print them. On the card is a photo of each girl. Each girl will have a pack of 50 cards for each game to hand out, and they can autograph the cards as a souvenir of the game for the Brazilian kids.”
The All-Stars, staff members and a group of parents leave June 26, flying from JFK Airport to Sao Paolo. Then, they will board another jet for a 650-mile journey north to the coastal city of Vitoria. Then, the team will board a bus for a three-hour ride north to Sao Mateus. The bus trip is only 100 miles, but it is a one-lane, two-way road with plenty of logging and cement trucks using the route.
The team will stay 12 miles outside of Sao Mateus on the Island of Guriri at a very nice hotel, Pousada Ilha Bella, with the beach and Atlantic Ocean right across the dirt road that the hotel is located on.
Heitman calls his South American adventure the “Ginga Tour”. “Ginga” means this: an almost indefinable, mystical quality of movement and attitude possessed only by Brazilians and evident in everything they do, the way they walk, talk, dance and approach everything in their lives.
“They look at soccer in terms of art, music and beauty,” Heitman said. “They don’t see it as a business or a sport. They see it as pure pleasure.”
Heitman, a 1978 graduate of Northern Highlands High School where he was the head wrestling coach for 13 seasons [1990-91 to 2002-03], is a self-employed contractor who has had Brazilians work for him; they have since returned to their native country.
“This whole trip was generated by a simple ride in my truck with my workers,” Heitman said. “One day, they came with me to watch my daughter’s Mahwah High School soccer team play, and they were so impressed with the soccer team. They said the next day that their local city would love to see the girls play, and because of this conversation, we called the mayor of Sao Mateus and asked him if he would accommodate a team of Americans, and he said absolutely. Then we got in touch with the Sports Authority in the City of Sao Mateus, and they said they would be supportive.”
“When we arrived in last year, my two former workers, Jerry daSilva and Wagner Santos, who learned English in quite well, served as our translators,” said Heitman of communicating with the Portuguese-speaking Brazilians.
For the second year, Heitman made a special preliminary trip in mid May to Sao Mateus. He spent four days in the region to solidify the booking of teams to play and to get the word out that the Americans are returning.
“Each city is going to show us their culture and their economy, what makes them self-sufficient, and put their best teams on the field,” Heitman said. “The has never been represented in the four new cities we will be visiting.”
“Last year, I met with Sao Mateus’ sports administration people, and I was treated very well; I felt special,” said Heitman. “They don’t get any Americans down there. There are no accommodations for American tourism. No one travels from into this region. They go to the American hotels in Rio.”
Heitman was actually treated like a rock star, with television, radio and newspaper interviews.
“The people we will be meeting are genuine people, honest and giving, giving when they have nothing to give,” Heitman said. “They would do anything for you. They all wanted to be my friend and always asked how could they make me happy. The people in Sao Mateus were interested, because there was an American in their city. Prior to last year, never has an American team played any sport in this region within a 100-mile radius.”
“The Brazilian people are passionate people,” said Heitman. “They express love whether it’s for sports or whether it’s for people. I have always preached to my wrestlers that the greatest asset that they could have is not strength, not speed but passion, and with passion, you can gather all those things, but without passion, you can’t do it.”
Interestingly enough, , one of the world’s hotbeds for soccer, holds the American female soccer player in high regard.
“The Brazilians believe the has the best female soccer in the world,” Heitman said.
Heitman is also organizing a 17-and-under boys soccer team to go to the same region in from July 31 to Aug. 12. Anyone interested in a tryout should e-mail Heitman at daveheitman@yahoo.com.
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