Under a cloudy sky Tuesday afternoon, Inverness Park's Angelo Sacheli, coach of the Station House Locomotives soccer team, roared instructions at his players during an "offense-defense" practice.
"Michael, I don't want to see you sagging in here. I want you to be taking shots from outside the box....
"Tom, I want you sneaking in here behind William, who's out of position."
Sacheli warned of doom in an upcoming Saturday playoff game at West Marin School. "Let's start again. This is sloppy. They're going to kill us."
However, in a later scrimmage, his team of 10 and 11 year olds battled a team of older kids sponsored by Vladimir's restaurant to a 1-1 tie. Afterwards Sacheli seemed satisfied.
"We're playing the other Point Reyes team for third place," he told his young players before he let them go home for supper. "If you play with that kind of energy on Saturday, you're going to win. You just tied the under-15s."
In all, 270 kids play on 22 teams in the league, with 170 of the players coming from San Geronimo Valley teams. (Ten more team consist of kids from Fairfax.) They're divided into eight divisions along age lines. A handful of the players are female.
Although most of the players want to win with great intensity, the league is geared around recreation, not competition. Under league rules, each kid, regardless of ability, plays at least half of every game.
Teams are sponsored with $150 from local businesses. League organizing, coaching, officiating, and field maintenance is done by volunteers.
"West Marin has been a nucleus around which youth soccer is being built," said John Hulls of Point Reyes Station, who coached in the league six years before taking a breather this season. "It's a kind of gateway for the kids to go to select teams and high school teams."
Hulls said enthusiasm for soccer in West Marin has paralleled a trend nationwide. The sport had a role in the 1996 presidential campaign, with President Bill Clinton identifying "soccer moms" some of his key supporters.
Clinton, however, should be careful not to alienate the other half of the population: "Soccer dads do just as much coaching, chauffeuring, and reffing as the moms," Hulls said.
Not surprisingly, the local game has taken on a distinctly Latin flavor. In fact, a former league coach, Eduardo Zarco from El Salvador, this fall coached the boys soccer team at Tomales High into the playoffs in his first year.
"You see guys - especially [Tomales High School senior] Matt Love - incorporating it into their game," he said. "The Anglos are getting pulled into the Latino game. It's outstanding."
Hulls explained that Latino kids learn their skills on West Marin ranches, playing a sort of street-style of game that has more to do with keeping the ball away from an adversary and than booting balls far down field or blasting a ball into a goal.
"They develop really good passing and ball-handling skills," Hulls said, noting that the Latinos, unlike the Anglos, use a style familiar to him from his native England. "With the Anglo kids, the only way they play soccer is on teams in an organized setting."
The international influence has helped parents and coaches too. Sacheli said that years ago he learned some of his coaching skills by picking the brains of three British men over beers at the Old Western Saloon and the Station House Cafe.
"It was tough finding coaches because people don't know anything [about soccer]," Sacheli recalled. "The guys who knew a lot were guys from other countries like Hulls from England, Zarco from El Salvador, and "Kubsch" [Nils Jappe] from Denmark."
And as kids have taken up the game in growing numbers, more adults have grown attached. Hulls noted that more and more Latino parents are showing up to watch the youth games. Also, a group of Latinos last year began renting the West Marin School field for adult pickup soccer games.
"It's certainly a family-oriented community out here [in the Valley]," she said. "Getting out there with the little ones is just delightful. I think it's a great way to get out there with the community that's not political."
She said Valley residents have begun their own pickup game on Sundays at Lagunitas School. "I heard there were 65 people playing last Sunday," she said.
Garthwaite is especially pleased with the growing interest among girls. "Maybe it's getting easier for girls to think it's okay to play," she said.
The league has specifically recruited young adults to coach, as the players' parents are sometimes too busy.
One of this year's top teams - Vladimir's - is run by head coach Xerxes Whitney, 25, and assistant coach Grayson Kent, 22. Whitney stepped in just two weeks before the first game.
"They were having trouble finding coaches," he said. "Other parents who had coached in the past weren't into coaching."
Whitney said his team has eight wins, one loss, and one tie despite playing for a coach whose soccer experience amounts to one year of playing back when he was 11 years old. "That's the extent of my soccer knowledge," he admitted.
Whitney's team on Saturday, Nov. 23, will play the Cafe Espresso team for first place in the division with the oldest players.
The league also uses young people to officiate, which on occasion presents a problem. Earlier this season, Hulls, who helps supervise teen referees, had to temporarily expel a soccer dad who was giving a young referee a hard time.
"Little-league parentism has reared its ugly head," Hulls said with a laugh. "There's a real attempt to stop that. [Abusive behavior] soon encourages the kids, the coaches, and some of the other parents to start doing the same thing."
Even with these minor flare-ups, Hulls said, the league is stronger than ever. He recalled a conversation that took place years ago with a Mexican coach, who asked Hulls, "Do you think we'll ever teach the Americans how to play soccer?"
Hulls remarked this week, "I think we have."