Cal State Fullerton Notebook / Robyn Norwood : Goalie Has Skill and Is Glad to Talk About It

Al Mistri, Cal State Fullerton’s soccer coach, cannot settle on a word to describe Jay Nettekoven, the Titans’ supremely confident goalkeeper. By turns, Mistri calls him tremendous, superlative, superior.

And Nettekoven? You expect him to argue?

This is a fellow with all the humility of Muhammad Ali. The way he has it figured, it’s an occupational necessity.

“My coach calls me cocky. Everybody calls me cocky,” Nettekoven said. “You have to be cocky for this sport and this position. You have to.”

And if you play goalie for the Titans, you also have to work hard. In 16 games, Nettekoven has allowed an average of 1.5 goals a game. To do that, he has had to make 102 saves.

They keep him busy, but Nettekoven doesn’t mind.

“How else can I excel at what I want to do?” he said. “That’s what I enjoy. I know I’m not going to save them all. But I can try.”

Little inspires his disdain so much as an idle goalie.

“I’ve seen keepers who stand in there and make 1 save, and people regard them as a good keeper because they have 24 shutouts or something,” he said. “I’d like to have a stat that says I made 150 saves in a season.”

With the Titans, he has a shot.

Fullerton has struggled to a 6-8-2 record this season, including 7 overtime games, 4 of which ended in losses on penalty kicks.

If not for Nettekoven, Mistri says, Fullerton couldn’t have stayed in many of those games as long as it did.

“He keeps us alive,” Mistri said.

But Nettekoven is bothered by those 4 games that ended with the ball settling into the net behind him on a penalty kick--a one-on-one with the advantage to the kicker.

“I feel every time there’s a penalty kick, I should save it,” he said. “The odds are in the kicker’s favor, but I feel personally I should save it. I feel terrible when the ball hits the back of the net. People say, ‘Oh, it was a penalty kick, you didn’t have a chance.’ I always think I do.”

Mistri said Nettekoven’s confidence and concentration make him a fine goalkeeper. Last year, when Mistri put the candidates for goalie through drills he called “torturous,” Nettekoven didn’t win the job.

Bryan Fisher became the starter. But toward the end of the season, Nettekoven, then a freshman, took over.

“I said then if I ever get my chance, no one will ever see daylight,” Nettekoven said.

He was about right. Nettekoven went 5-1-1 in the last 7 games of last season, and Fisher has played only half a game this season.

The big difference is Nettekoven’s ability to concentrate, Mistri said.

“Once the game starts, he goes into a trance. He’s very difficult to talk to. Extremely intense. He looks like he’s on a different planet. . . . He becomes oblivious to everything else.”

That’s not a quality that extends to all aspects of Nettekoven’s life. As he puts it, “If I was this intense about my academics, I’d be at Harvard, I think.”

Nettekoven came to Fullerton from Damien High School in La Verne, where Mistri is a math teacher. Mistri, in fact, jokes that he thought the association might work against him when he recruited Nettekoven. Suffice it to say that Nettekoven was not crazy about Mistri’s algebra class.

Nevertheless, he came, and he has made his place.

“When I announce the lineup,” Mistri said, “I never mention the goalie. It’s obvious.”

That’s clear to Nettekoven as well.

“I played baseball (in high school), and I pitched,” he said. “I figure if I played football, I’d be the quarterback. I’m one to take all the attention. The crowd turns me on. Don’t get me wrong, I play for myself, not anybody else. But it helps.”

As does his tremendous, superlative, superior confidence.

“You have to know who you are, and you have to show other people who you are,” Nettekoven said. “I don’t go around boasting, but if people ask, hey . . . “

He tells them.

Chris Wright, a Fullerton outside linebacker, was named the Big West Conference defensive player of the week after making 2 interceptions and recovering a fumble in the Titans’ 24-3 victory over New Mexico State Saturday.

Wright, a junior and a former running back at Loara High School, is the Titans’ third-leading tackler with 50 this season.

Gary Henderson, who coached San Diego State’s junior varsity baseball team last season, has joined Larry Cochell’s staff as a part-time assistant.

Henderson, 27, also will work as an academic assistant to Alison Cone, Fullerton’s academics coordinator.

Henderson, twice honored as a Western Athletic Conference scholar-athlete, played for the Aztecs and earned an undergraduate degree in 1983. He has earned a teaching certificate and is working toward a master’s degree.

Titan Notes

The status of John Bavaro, Fullerton’s starting nose guard, remains uncertain. Bavaro, who has been ill and also bothered by personal matters, according to coaches, missed the Titan bus for the trip to the New Mexico State game and did not show for practice Monday. “We haven’t heard from him, and we can’t get in touch with him,” Titan Coach Gene Murphy said. “We want him here, that’s for sure.” . . . The 1988 Titan baseball schedule includes back-to-back, 3-game home series against National Collegiate Athletic Assn. champion Stanford and Arizona in February.