GUARDIAN ANGEL

sen-ti-nel, n. 1. a person . . . set to guard a group; specif., a sentry.

--Webster’s New World Dictionary

****

Her players may come to school hungry, then be robbed on the way home.

When the sun shines, they practice on a dirt field the consistency of frozen peanut butter. When it rains, they train indoors, amid echoes in a school hallway and an underground stairwell.

And yet, Belmont High boys’ soccer Coach Nancy Carr-Swaim and her charges persevere.

Ten years ago, Carr-Swaim took over the program as a total outsider--an Anglo woman with a limited soccer background--and began a decade of daily triumphs and tragedies.

Under her leadership, the Sentinels have won three City Section titles and made five championship game appearances. From one of the nation’s largest and most overcrowded high schools have come a team and coach who stand alone.

The bell rings and what had been an empty hall at Belmont High is flooded with a churning sea of baggy jeans, backpacks and black hair. A sandwich in hand, Carr-Swaim dodges the lunchtime traffic and carries on a conversation over her shoulder.

Her concern at the moment is the fate of one of her players, a 17-year-old freshman who emigrated from Mexico to the United States alone several months ago and hasn’t been seen for days.

Carr-Swaim, one of three women coaching boys’ soccer in the City section, has heard that the player was living in a shelter but has since moved to San Francisco in search of a job.

She learned this too late, however, and can now only hope he is getting by.

“He would have played for us,” Carr-Swaim said. “He just stopped coming to school.”

Such stories are part of the day at 74-year-old Belmont, which has an enrollment of 5,100 students in a year-round program and is not only the state’s largest high school but the largest west of the Mississippi.

Belmont’s student body is 85% Latino, the rest a cultural-ethnic mix. About 65% are the children of first-generation immigrants living in the poverty-stricken Wilshire corridor between the Hollywood and Santa Monica freeways, just west of downtown Los Angeles.

Graffiti, barred windows and razor wire overwhelm block after block of massive, sagging apartment buildings. The area’s crime rate is among the highest in the city and teenagers traveling to and from school make inviting prey.

“Our kids come from a multitude of crisis situations and they need stability,” Belmont Principal Augustine Herrera Jr. said. “They need to walk on campus and know that for six or seven hours, someone cares about them.”

Eric Hernandez, a former player who coaches the junior varsity, knew Carr-Swaim was the person who cared about him. Several times a week, his coach ventured into a neighborhood Hernandez describes as violent to drive him to or from school. One day, he traveled alone and was robbed at gunpoint by two younger boys at a bus stop.

Carr-Swaim did the same for Julio Vidrio, a former player who lived near the intersection of Adams Street and San Pedro Boulevard near USC.

Vidrio’s home school was Jefferson High, but he, like Hernandez, got a waiver to attend Belmont, more than an hour’s walk from his home. Several times he was chased and once he was threatened with a gun by gang members on Figueroa Street.

Vidrio said he received little support at home and credits Carr-Swaim with helping him finish high school. But he feared for her safety when she gave him rides.

“I never wanted to bother her because something bad could happen to her coming down there,” he said. “But we’d ride and she’d tell me to keep my head up and give everything I had. I saw her as a coach but also as a friend that I could talk to. She’s a great lady.”

Carr-Swaim, 46, gives her players lifts because she can’t bear to see them face danger so often.

“Something inside me says that if I don’t make this effort, something could happen to them and I couldn’t forgive myself,” she said.

Her efforts are not limited to life-and-death situations. One player was kicked out of his house by relatives after his 1992 graduation when he chose college over full-time employment. Last year, after five years of renting a room from Carr-Swaim and her husband in Altadena, that player moved out on his own. He continues to pursue an engineering degree at Cal State Los Angeles.

Belmont started a girls’ soccer program in 1989 and Carr-Swaim believes coaching it would offer her an easier road. She has no intention of making the move.

“I know I could bond more easily with the girls, but it’s a challenge with our team and we’ve been successful,” she said. “They were raised on soccer and it means everything to them.

“I know there’s a respect they have for me, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to do what I ask. And they learn about life. I’m trying to make them decent human beings, not just soccer players.”

Only five starters return from last year’s Belmont team that beat El Camino Real in the City final and earned Carr-Swaim a ride on the shoulders of her sobbing players. Even so, Belmont is favored to repeat when it begins its Northern Conference season Wednesday.

Belmont’s players are remarkably similar in both shape and talent, though they are natives of five countries--the U.S, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Many wear earrings and a hairstyle that features only stubble on the back and sides of the head. Short, with a lean, sinewy resemblance to racing greyhounds, the Sentinels control the ball with seemingly effortless, subtle touches learned playing soccer for nearly as long as they have walked.

But it is not skill alone that has earned Belmont its considerable reputation. Discipline, current and past players agree, has made the difference.

“If a player has talent she’ll get it out of you somehow,” said Hernandez, 20, who played at Cal Poly Pomona the last two seasons. “That’s what makes her a great coach.”

Marlon Orellana, a senior midfielder, quit the team earlier this month after an argument with Carr-Swaim. He came back several weeks later, asking for a second chance.

“Ms. Carr doesn’t put up with any crap,” Orellana said. “Once I thought about it good all by myself, I figured out I had no reason to do what I did and that she deserved respect.”

Carr-Swaim, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, fought for her players’ respect from the day she was hired as a first-year teacher at Belmont in 1986. But it took time.

“Most Latinos have the mentality that females don’t know about soccer,” Hernandez said.

Unable to speak Spanish, and with her soccer experience limited to a women’s league, Carr-Swaim initially worried about being taken seriously as a disciplinarian. Trying to win the players’ acceptance, she occasionally allowed them to slip out of control.

One used a road cone to mock her sexually during a practice her first season. Several years later, players exchanged insults with a girls’ basketball team during a trip and Carr-Swaim and her team were thrown off the bus by the driver.

“[The players] would do anything but sit quiet and pay attention,” Carr-Swaim said. “Sometimes it would get to me and I’d have to walk away because I felt like I was going to cry.”

But Belmont won the Northern Conference title in Carr-Swaim’s first season and the City title game in her second. She learned some Spanish and learned some soccer too, asking questions of more experienced coaches.

Burbank Burroughs’ Mike Kodama was one of them. He says she learned well.

“She knows the game and more than that she knows people,” Kodama said. “You can tell her players trust her and I’m always impressed by her coaching.”

Carr-Swaim, whose teams have never missed the playoffs, said she gained real control of her players during the 1993-94 season. Never a pushover, she set down even stricter rules that season and weeded out potential troublemakers during tryouts.

That team defeated Bell in the 1994 City final but was stripped of the title 10 days later when an ineligible player, a transfer who had been mistakenly cleared by Belmont Athletic Director Jeff Hebron, was reported by the player’s former coach.

The player, whose status also cost Belmont’s football team an outstanding season, tried to shoot himself but was stopped by his brother, Carr-Swaim said.

“The coach at his former school knew he was ineligible but waited until after we won [the title] to bring it up,” Carr-Swaim said. “It would have been unforgivable if [the player had] died.”

Carr-Swaim coached her team to a share of the 1996 title and to an outright championship last March, the third recognized championship in the program’s history.

Belmont was seeded second in last year’s 32-team playoffs, behind Reseda. But although Reseda was Belmont’s equal in talent, it self-destructed in a flurry of yellow cards and ejections in a second-round loss. The Sentinels maintained a level-headed march to the title.

“Soccer is such a highly charged game emotionally,” Herrera, the principal, said. “But game after game, Nancy’s kids are under control.”

Much of that restraint probably is the result of Carr-Swaim’s vigilance at practice. She is in constant motion, her voice rising above the sounds of play with instructions and exhortations. In a 15-minute span, she calls the names of nearly all 20 of her players.

And the Sentinels give her plenty to work with. Central midfielder Victor Saban, a brilliant Guatemalan playmaker, has returned to his country for several weeks to try out for its under-19 national team.

Forward Rodolfo Duran scored 17 goals last season and has been offered a chance to train with a Mexican professional team.

Other Sentinels have comparable skills but lack exposure.

“They just love to play,” Carr-Swaim said. “They’d do it 24 hours a day if they could.”

Seated at her desk in the girls’ physical education office at Belmont, Carr-Swaim happily greets players whose faces periodically appear at the door.

“I understand them,” she said. “I think some kids at other schools wouldn’t go for my rules and they’d bring their lawyer daddy to pressure me to keep them on the team.”

Twice in the recent past, Carr-Swaim has had offers to coach a junior college women’s soccer team. She declined both times.

“When I was student-teaching, I figured I’d want to teach the kind of kids I grew up with,” she said. “I never would have imagined I’d work down here. I didn’t even like driving into L.A.

“But I’m happy where I am. We’re successful and the kids and I enjoy each other.”

For a moment at least, the sentinel rests easy.