He’s a Star in Training : Taylor Tries to Keep the Sockers Rolling

SAN DIEGO — Bill Taylor has an unglamorous job of taping ankles, wrapping knees and massaging muscles, but to his patients, he’s known as “Movie Star” and “Mr. GQ.”

The Socker trainer--who played the trainer of the U.S. men’s volleyball team in the 1985 movie “Spiker”--seems as if he would be better suited for Hollywood than a training room.

“He’s so good-looking that the guys were a little upset at first,” Socker midfielder Brian Quinn said. “On this team, the coach is making more money than the players and the trainer is better-looking than the players.”

“These guys give me a lot of abuse,” said Taylor, 29, who still looks as if he could play in the defensive backfield.

“I take care of myself. I don’t think you should be an overweight, out-of-shape trainer telling a world-class athlete to do 9,000 push-ups. How can an athlete have respect for that trainer?”

The Sockers say they respect Taylor, who believes in pushing an athlete to his tolerance level.

“I won’t baby them,” Taylor said. “The sooner you get an athlete moving, the better. You can push them harder than an average person because their bodies are in such good shape.”

Taylor, who played football in college and who was a four-sport athlete (football, baseball, wrestling and discus) at Palmdale High, believes that being an athlete himself has benefited his relationships with athletes.

“I understand what they’re going through,” Taylor said. “I’m able to develop a rapport with the athletes. I’m more a players’ trainer. I never had a problem getting along with athletes. You have to be honest and explain to them what they want to know.”

And Taylor says you also have to be firm.

Quinn said, “Coming from football, where everything is macho, he pushes you as hard as you can go. It’s good. Now and then, you need a little push to get over the hump.”

Quinn has become quite familiar with Taylor’s techniques in recent weeks. He’s one of five injured Sockers who have been regularly working with Taylor at the Athletic Injury and Orthopedic Rehabilitation Center in San Diego.

The Sockers avoided serious injuries through the first half of this season, but suddenly, five regulars--including the team’s top three scorers--were sidelined within three weeks.

Branko Segota has missed four straight games and five of six with a strained right thigh. Juli Veee, Hugo Perez, Quinn (sprained right knees) and George Katakalidis (sprained left toe) are on the Major Indoor Soccer League injured reserve list.

This sudden rash of injuries to the Sockers makes Taylor feel as if he’s back with the Los Angeles Express of the United States Football League.

And those are not good memories.

“My last season with the Express was a nightmare,” said Taylor, who was the assistant trainer for the Express from 1983 to 1985. “We had a lot of injuries: two broken necks, 17 knee surgeries, a broken forearm. . .

“We finished the season with 26 healthy players. It got so bad that (quarterback) Steve Young played some running back the final game. That was kind of a joke because he wasn’t going to hit anyone.”

After the Express folded, Taylor was offered a job with the Athletic Injury and Orthopedic Rehabilitation Center, which provides a trainer for the Sockers.

“I was bummed out at the time and wanted a break,” said Taylor, who turned the job down and took a year off from being a trainer. One year later, when the same job was offered to Taylor, he accepted. And once again, he finds himself with a club that is decimated by injuries.

Three of the Sockers’ injuries are to right knees. Coincidentally, Taylor’s collegiate football carer--which he hoped to turn into a professional career--ended when he suffered stretched medial collateral ligaments in his right knee during an Aztec practice in 1979.

“I thought I had a chance at playing in the pros until the injury,” said Taylor, who at Idaho played defensive back at Idaho State his freshman and sophomore seasons, and at SDSU played defensive back his junior year and linebacker for part of his senior season before he was injured.

A scout from the Cleveland Browns timed Taylor running a 4.6 in the 40-yard dash in 1980, but Taylor never heard from that scout, that team or any other team after his injury.

That was the end of Taylor’s dream of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a professional athlete. His father, Bill Taylor, was a reserve outfielder for five seasons (1954-58) with the New York Giants and Detroit Tigers.

After his injury, Taylor--he is not a “junior”--devoted himself to becoming a trainer.

He started out as a premedical student at Idaho State, but playing football and taking a premedical course load proved too demanding. He switched to physical therapy and then to athletic training.

“It was a way I could stay around athletics,” said Taylor, who graduated from SDSU in 1980 with a major in physical education and an emphasis in athletic training.

While taking graduate courses at SDSU, Taylor was the trainer for two summers for the Padres’ Northwest League Class A franchise in Walla Walla, Wash.

He also traveled around the world for three years with the U.S. men’s volleyball team and worked with the team during the ’84 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

Once the Olympics were over, the U.S. volleyball team couldn’t pay enough to keep Taylor. The Express folded. It was on to the MISL.

He found that soccer players--and particularly Socker players--are different from other athletes he has worked with.

Taylor calls the San Diego players “gremlins” because of all their pranks on the road. He quickly learned to hang on to his wallet and to keep an eye on his briefcase whenever the players were milling about. “The biggest difference with these guys is that they are much more individualistic,” Taylor said. “Football and basketball coaches try to maintain more rigid control over their teams than this team.”

But like trainers in football and baseball, trainers in soccer have to walk a tightrope between treating players and representing management. And it isn’t always easy.

“There’s a fine line,” Taylor said. “You’re on the edge all the time. If you lose the players’ respect, they won’t trust you to take care of them. Then you’re in serious trouble.

“I also have to maintain a delicate balance with the front office. Don’t ask me to lie (about injuries). I won’t do it for anyone. I may not answer a question directly, but I won’t lie.”

In addition to serving as trainer and as a spokesman who deals with the media concerning injuries, Taylor is the Sockers’ traveling secretary. When the team is on the road, Taylor is responsible for handling plane tickets, players’ per diem and arrangements for wake-up calls and practice facilities.

“I hate road trips,” Taylor said. “It’s hard. My hours are long. I’m the first one there and the last to leave. You’re on call 24 hours a day. Trainers need their sleep, too.”