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Saturday, April 29, 2000 By Ray Fittipaldo, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
Most expansion teams have a five-year plan to compete for a championship. The Riverhounds have a two-year plan.
Changes this season in A-League soccer.
Buoyed by a successful first season in A-League soccer last year when they went 16-12 and made the playoffs, the Riverhounds have their sights set on a the ultimate goal this season: a league championship.
After a slow start to their inaugural season, the Riverhounds won 11 of their final 14 games and made the playoffs. They met conference favorite Rochester in the first round and lost the series, 2-1.
The late-season run has heightened expectations for this season, and Coach John Kowalski is not backing down from championship talk.
"This year it's really important to be first or second in our division, so we don't have to play Rochester too early in the playoffs," Kowalski said. "We want to get the highest seed possible. I really believe we have the talent to beat anyone in the league. Yes, it is possible to win a championship."
"We all feel like we can win a championship," said forward Phil Karn, who led the Riverhounds in scoring last season with 27 points.
The Riverhounds begin their quest at 7:35 tonight at Bethel Park High School Stadium when they play host to the Toronto Lynx in the season opener.
Building a minor-league professional soccer franchise is different from building a team in any of the major-league sports. The Riverhounds were able to compete sooner than many expected for several reasons.
General Manager Dave Kasper and the coaching staff stockpiled talent through the expansion and college drafts, and, because soccer is an international sport, they were able to sign some talented European players who were not available in the drafts. Plus, owner Paul Heasley provided Kasper with a budget that was competitive with the top teams in the league.
The Riverhounds didn't want to be known as an expansion team for long.
"When you hear expansion in any sport, you expect the first five years to be terrible," said midfielder Edward Child, the son of assistant coach Paul Child, a former player with the Pittsburgh Spirit indoor team. "But with John, my dad and others in the organization ... they knew enough people around the country that they knew how to get this off the ground."
"Everything is done first class here," Karn said. "Last year, John put together a bunch of players, and nobody knew where anyone was going to play. But after we came together, we found out we could play with the teams in this league. At the end of the season, we were beating the teams that were supposed to beat us. And when we lost to Rochester, we felt we should have beaten them."
Kowlaski said a fast start is paramount to the team making a run at first or second place in the Atlantic Division, and thus avoiding a top seed early in the playoffs. If that's going to happen, the Riverhounds are going to have to do it without four starters in the first part of the season.
Forward Michael Apple and midfielder Goran Vasic are playing in the National Professional Soccer League playoffs with the Cleveland Crunch and will not be available until sometime next week at the earliest. Midfielder Adam Fedoruk, who is finishing a professional outdoor season with a team in Poland, is due to rejoin the team sometime next week.
Karn has a sprained foot that has been slow to heal. He had a bone scan taken earlier this week and could miss four more weeks.
"Yes, I am concerned about not having those players, and we do have to get off to a quick start" Kowalski said. "With the injuries and the players missing, it doesn't look good for us. However, there are enough quality players here that we can be respectable and win our share of games without those guys. It affects the team, but the season is long.
"And the second part is the way the schedule lines up. We have five or our first six games at home in May then go on the road for five of our next six in June. If we don't accumulate wins in May, it will be more difficult to get wins away from home in June because when you start losing, the chemistry of the team goes, that belief and confidence goes by the wayside."
Professional soccer has never gone over big in Pittsburgh, but Kowalski wants to change that. And he wants to do it by scoring a lot of goals -- something that is rare in outdoor soccer -- and molding his team in the image of the city.
"We don't want to play 1-0 games," Kowalski said. "We want to play more like 5-3 games. It might not be good for the coach, but it will be good for the fans.
"We want to reflect Pittsburgh. We want to roll up our sleeves and have a good work ethic. We're not Los Angeles or New York with the lights and Broadway. We have good work ethic and good chemistry and that can take us a long way."
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The league downsized from 30 teams to 25.