Soccer stars making their pitch

Coaches scramble to finalize their rosters as elite players rotate in with colleges, clubs.

- BY ERIC SONDHEIMER

Welcome to another high school soccer season in which so many boys’ and girls’ players are coming and going that you'll need to make a phone call or send a text to the head coach to confirm who's playing or who's off competing for a club team, a national team or working out with a pro team.

It’s not chaos, just another sign of the many options elite players in Southern California have to consider, and playing high school soccer isn’t exactly the No. 1 in priority in the minds of USA Soccer, club teams, college programs and pro teams.

The example of Santa Margarita’s top senior girls’ players, goalie Peyton Trayer and forward Coral Fry, is perhaps the future. They helped the Eagles win the Southern Section Open Division championship as juniors. This season, they'll be playing for Santa Margarita this month until they leave in January to join their respective college programs —North Carolina and Tennessee. Each said seven recruits from their future college teams are also leaving high school early.

“For me, it’s a huge advantage to go in the spring, start classes and get acclimated to the environment, get a semester ahead training with the team and do the strength and conditioning to be ready for my freshman season,” Trayer said.

Said Fry: “The higher level of training is going to help me so much by the time the college season comes around.”

Trayer and three other players got into trouble last season when they went to participate in a pro team training session in Brazil and were declared ineligible in the middle of the high school season for violating CIF bylaw 600.