AZUSA, Calif. -- Less than 48 hours prior to Saturday’s scheduled Golden State Athletic Conference men’s soccer postseason tournament championship, Azusa Pacific head coach Phil Wolf thought he had a pretty full plate. He had just one more training session before a conference final that would determine the GSAC’s automatic bid to the NAIA Men’s Soccer National Championship, he had a group of seniors to honor before what could be their final home game and he had to figure out what kind of tactics he should employ to make sure his Cougars could avoid a similar result to the 2-1 defeat they suffered to Westmont last year in the first round of the NAIA Region II Playoffs.
That was just the soccer. Just 2 weeks ago, Wolf missed Azusa Pacific’s final week of the regular season to travel to Russia to complete the adoption of a young boy who would become Wolf and his wife Melanie’s fourth child. His mother, who traveled to Russia to help with the adoption process, was spending the week visiting with Phil’s older brother Dave Wolf, the Westmont men’s soccer head coach and athletic director and father of 5 children with his wife Jill, at the family’s home in Montecito.
Phil received a call from his mother, around 6:30 p.m. Thursday evening, informing him that the family had been forced to immediately evacuate their home. A few hours later, Dave Wolf’s family learned that their home had been destroyed by the rapidly-growing wildfire, 1 of 15 Westmont faculty homes lost in the blaze. For everyone involved on either side, the GSAC title game meant very little compared to the safety and welfare of Westmont’s students and faculty.
While GSAC administrators worked with NAIA officials on a postponement plan for the game, Phil went straight up to Santa Barbara to be with his family.
“I think they’re doing well,” Phil Wolf said. “I know they had a lot of people come and offer help, whether it’s housing or other things. I’m sure it’s going to be just like any tragedy, in the fact that it kind of comes in waves. Sometimes you’re doing better than other times, so I imagine they’re going to be on a bit of a rollercoaster, but at least from my talking to them, it seems like they’re doing fairly well.”
Postponing the match until Monday allowed the Westmont team the opportunity to regroup and travel together to Azusa over the weekend, and the NAIA was still able to put together the national tournament bracket over the weekend as originally planned. Neither team would have been extended an at-large bid into the tournament, so the winner of Monday’s GSAC championship will move into the 31-team field as the No. 11 seed. What essentially amounts to a national tournament play-in game between Azusa Pacific and Westmont will end one team’s season Monday afternoon.
“It obviously increases the drama of it,” Phil Wolf said. “It was a big game prior to (the fire), but you realize that a big game compared to other things is not as big. Hopefully tomorrow will have a good environment and a good spirit in the fact that they have suffered some loss and we’re kind of a sister school that wants to help. I’m hoping the spirit is good, as it tends to be good in APU/Westmont games anyway, but there’s going to be some special meaning tomorrow that maybe wouldn’t be there in a normal final.”
The game itself pits the NAIA’s winningest program in history against its defending national champion. Westmont’s teams have won an NAIA-record 561 games and made 16 trips to the national tournament, while Azusa Pacific’s recent rise to national prominence included 2 straight title-game appearances in 2005 and 2006 before the Cougars claimed the program’s first-ever NAIA crown in 2007. The programs are led by a pair of brothers who both played at NCAA Division III power Wheaton College under legendary head coach Joe Bean, the winningest coach in collegiate soccer history.
Dave Wolf has more wins than any coach in Westmont history, racking up 240 wins in 18 seasons and doing so with a program-record .703 career winning percentage. Phil, younger than Dave by 6 years, joined Azusa Pacific in 2001 and turned the Cougar men’s soccer program into an NAIA power. Four of Azusa Pacific’s 5 NAIA Tournament appearances have come under Wolf, the 2007 Brine-NAIA Coach of the Year.
As successful as the brothers have been, the 2 are required as conference rivals to face each other at least once a year, resulting in a competitive paradox. No win is more bittersweet for either Wolf than a win over the other, yet moving on from defeat is made easier with the knowledge that the person savoring the win is a person you love and respect.
“I don’t sense any difference in the game itself when he’s the one coaching on the other side of the field,” Dave said. “Where it is different is what happens after the game. The guy who wins probably doesn’t celebrate or get as excited as he might otherwise be in a game against a good opponent, and I think on the other side, the coach that loses the game, he probably doesn’t want to be as discouraged or somber. In a game like Monday’s game, which is a final, where there’s a trip to the national tournament on the line, the stakes are pretty high. It’s a game that has a lot of meaning in it, but I think there’s probably a very measured way that both of us try to handle the result regardless of which way it falls.”
Head-to-head competition isn’t something the Wolf brothers relish, perhaps because they didn’t grow up in rivalry with each other. With 6 years difference and another sibling between the pair, the Wolfs were inseparable.
“It wasn’t a real competition,” Phil said. “He was more of a teacher who took care of me. I needed to find my way, and he helped me find my way. It was too big of a gap for us to really compete, and he’s always been great. He’s been so encouraging in my playing career and coaching career, and I certainly wouldn’t be where I am without him, that’s for sure.”
Dave was the target of Phil’s admiration throughout his playing career at the collegiate and professional levels before joining the college coaching ranks, and Dave enjoyed the satisfaction of helping his younger sibling along the path to a successful playing and coaching career. Now, the biggest difference between the 2 is probably the nicknames given to them by their players. Dave is known as “Wolfie” to Westmont’s players, while Phil answers to “Wolfer” from those he leads at Azusa Pacific.
“We’ve always gotten along really well, and I’m not sure exactly why that is,” Dave said. “He was a very talented player, and it was a lot of fun for me to include him. He was a 13-, 14-year old high schooler playing with college guys a lot of the time, and it was a lot of fun for me to bring him along knowing that he was so gifted. I also knew how much he would benefit from being with the older guys and playing with them. In some ways I might have gotten started coaching earlier than I really even thought.”
Dave Wolf became Westmont’s head coach in 1991, while Phil joined Azusa Pacific a decade later.
“My initial reaction was just overwhelmingly positive, mostly from the vantage point that probably the most difficult thing for me personally leaving the midwest initially to come to California was leaving him,” Dave said. “I think that was the hardest part of the move for me to California, so the thought that he was going to be coming to the West Coast, even if it meant coaching in the same conference and obviously coaching such a great program, that was pretty secondary to me.”
No coach in the GSAC has fared as well against Phil Wolf as older brother Dave. Since Phil’s 2001 arrival at Azusa Pacific, Westmont has won 4 of the 11 matchups between the programs, and only twice has a game between the programs been decided by more than 1 goal. Both of those games took place at Westmont’s Russ Carr Field, while all 6 matchups in Azusa have been settled by a single-goal margin. Westmont was the winner in the 2001, 2003 and 2007 matchups in Azusa, while the Cougars defended their home turf successfully 3 straight years from 2005 through 2007 before last year’s regional playoff defeat to the Warriors.
The Cougar Soccer Complex is the closest thing to a home away from home for Westmont’s men’s soccer team, which has played 12 games at Azusa Pacific over the past 5 seasons.
“Obviously, it’s a little bit interesting for the players, knowing that Phil and I are brothers, just how to act towards each other,” said Dave Wolf. “I think it’s actually pretty simple for Phil and I, we just continue to be the way that we’ve always been, but I think for the guys it’s a little bit unique.”
“A couple years ago, when we played there, they hosted us for a meal after the game and really just reached out to us. Our guys were very impressed with the APU guys and who they were as people and the gesture of fellowship that they had extended to our team. We had a great time with them after the game, and I think that what they recognized was you still have to be intentional about creating positive relationships and experiences between teams. They took the initiative. When our guys talk about APU, it’s different than when they talk about anybody else, and it’s because of the respect factor.”
Westmont has participated in tournaments hosted by the Cougars and made postseason trips to the Canyon City in addition to the regularly-scheduled every-other-year visits assigned by the GSAC. In 2007, the Warriors did all 3, participating in Azusa Pacific’s Cougar Classic for 2 games, visiting the Cougars during GSAC play and then traveling back for their first-round upset in the 2007 NAIA Region II playoffs that dealt the eventual NAIA champion its only defeat of the season.
“When you play a really good team, you want to play your best,” said Westmont senior forward Jon Schoff, who scored twice in Westmont’s 5-2 win over Bethel (Tenn.) on Aug. 30 in Azusa and will be playing Monday in his 10th career game at the Cougar Soccer Complex. “We really like the field at Azusa Pacific, so we always love to go play there. In the back of our heads, it’s a confidence booster for us. We know we can play well on that field, because we’ve done it before.”
But there’s something more when Azusa Pacific and Westmont meet, when Phil and Dave Wolf exchange pregame pleasantries and send their charges out for at least 90 minutes of soccer the way soccer was meant to be played.
“I’d like to say yes (that there’s a sibling rivalry between the brothers), but they don’t show it at all,” Azusa Pacific senior All-GSAC defender Jared Karkas said. “They do very well not showing any sibling rivalry. You always see after the game, no matter what the outcome is, they’re just talking like normal brothers like nothing happened. Win or lose, it doesn’t matter, they’re just there to have fun and coach their teams. Both teams have had a lot of respect for each other no matter what the outcome of the game. That shows a lot, especially with how competitive it is, when 2 teams can still respect each other after the game.”
The unspoken bond of brotherly love has woven itself into the fabric of the rivalry, where players on either side who don’t interact but for an afternoon or 2 each year find themselves searching for the right words to express the respect they have for their Wolf-coached counterparts.
“You almost respect Azusa Pacific a little more than the other teams,” Schoff said. “We almost care for their players a little bit more than any other team in the conference. We respect what they do and how they play. It’s almost like they’re a brother team to us, even though we don’t know them personally. We understand, because they’re coached by a Wolf. It’s out of respect that we give it our best against Dave’s brother’s team. We give it all that game, and we do every game, but it’s something bigger when we play Azusa Pacific.”
It doesn’t get much bigger than Monday’s 2 p.m. contest, with the winner returning to the national tournament and earning an opening-round home game on Saturday, Nov. 22, against California Pacific Conference champion Holy Names University and the loser watching from home as 31 teams battle for the 2008 NAIA crown.
“Winning is the same, especially when you accomplish something,” Phil Wolf said. “If you were to win the GSAC Tournament championship and get a bid to the national tournament, you’re going to feel the same way about it. What you feel badly about, or what you really wish could happen, is for both teams to go. You want to say, your team’s done great, my team’s done great, let’s both go. I would love to go to a national tournament with him and watch his team play and be happy for them accomplishing what they’ve accomplished. They’ve done great this year, and he’s done an unbelievable job.”
Regardless of the final score, Monday’s winner can be assured that it will not be alone on its 2008 NAIA tournament journey. Win or lose, Westmont and Azusa Pacific will always have a brother.
