Las Vegas Sports Academy teens break through for national soccer crown

To the victor goes the spoils, but not always a firetruck.

Because the National Premier League hasn’t existed nearly as long as Little League Baseball, doesn’t have a uniform patch patterned on the Pennsylvania Railroad Company logo or has never had Las Vegas resident Brent Musburger broadcast its championship game on national television, there wasn’t a firetruck and a parade waiting for the Las Vegas Sports Academy team when it returned from Indiana the other day.

The local 14-year-olds are believed to be the first team from Southern Nevada to win a national youth soccer championship. They are sort of following a trail blazed by the Mountain Ridge kids who were first to represent Las Vegas in the Little League World Series in 2014, and then nearly won it.

It was a great accomplishment by the Mountain Ridge youngsters, most of which grew up in well-manicured neighborhoods near Centennial Parkway in northwest Las Vegas, and had equipment bags with their names embroidered on. Most of the Sports Academy kids are from low-income households. There isn’t much embroidery on their soccer gear.

Coach Manleo Miranda deferred when asked to identify some of his star players. He mentioned only one indirectly — a defender named Alexis Bravo — who rode a CAT bus from North Las Vegas to the Kellogg Zaher Sports Complex at Buffalo and Washington so he could practice with his teammates.

Whereas most of the national finalists flew directly into Indianapolis, the Sports Academy kids booked passage through Chicago and rented cars for the three-hour drive down Interstate 65, because that was a lot cheaper.

“It’s a great feeling,” said Miranda, a youthful-appearing 38 and a native of Guatemala. He was a midfielder at Cimarron-Memorial High School during his playing days before becoming a U.S. Army sergeant.

“Nevada has usually been down on a soccer level — I know when I was in high school, Nevada never competed with the top South Cal, North Cal, Arizona teams.”

But this side of 14-year-olds beat those California and Arizona teams to get to Indiana, and then after they scraped the money together for airfare to Chicago through car washes and bake sales and garage sales, they beat a team from Wisconsin to win the championship.

More than 4,000 players representing 160 teams competed in the National Premier League, and when it stopped raining and the sun came back out and the humidity became oppressive again, the Las Vegas kids were the last ones standing.

Instead of a firetruck and a parade, Manleo Miranda said there probably would be a small barbecue to celebrate the Sports Academy soccer kids, during which he might let them sip Gatorade from the silver cup.

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* One of the coolest things about Thomas Pannone is that he pitches baseball for a team called the RubberDucks — the Akron RubberDucks, the Class AA affiliate of the Cleveland Indians. Pannone also pitched for the College of Southern Nevada, and recently was named to Baseball America’s Prospect Pulse Midseason All-Stars after compiling a 4-1 record with a 2.30 ERA in 11 starts for the RubberDucks. The left-hander was the Tribe’s ninth-round draft pick out of CSN in 2013.

* Moving up on my list of sports books to read during summertime that I intended to read during spring: “Olympic Collision: The Story of Mary Decker and Zola Budd” by Henderson resident Kyle Keiderling. It’s about the infamous women’s 3,000-meter run during the 1984 Olympics, when South Africa’s Budd got her bare feet tangled with Decker’s cleated ones sending the American gold medal hopeful sprawling to the floor of the L.A. Coliseum and reducing her to tears. The iconic story by which both runners still are defined is available via hard copy or Kindle through Amazon.com.

* I was saddened to learn that Babe Parilli died July 15 in Colorado. Parilli, whose given first name was Vito, was coach of the Arena Football League’s Las Vegas Sting. He also was Joe Namath’s backup with the Super Bowl-champion New York Jets and starred for Bear Bryant at Kentucky before becoming starting quarterback for the American Football League’s Boston Patriots. “He could really sling it,” said Steve Stallworth, South Point arena manager and former UNLV quarterback, about throwing the football around with the Babe when both were employed by the Sting. Babe Parilli was 87.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.