Connor Gaal dives to his right, extending fully prone to block a shot aimed just inside the goal post.
The goalkeeper shuffles to his left to step in front of a would-be goal directed downward off the head of an attacker perched at point-blank range.
The sophomore springs from a crowd of players to either snatch or punch away a bending pass intended for an offensive player in the 18-yard box.
Yet all the while, it is Gaal who is being saved.
The acrobatic, aggressive iconoclast has been a big part of Corona del Mar High’s run to a CIF Southern Section Division IV boys’ soccer title, and a berth in today’s CIF Southern California Regional Division II final against Santa Barbara at Warren High in Downey at 1 p.m.
But Gaal’s emergence on this team, in a new position, to what Coach George Larsen considers an elite level of play, in a return to his local public school, is as redemptive as it is remarkable.
“It has definitely been a fairy tale,” said Gaal, who this time last year was, he admitted, having a difficult time, socially, academically and athletically.
“I was at the point where I just didn’t care and I didn’t want to do anything,” he said.
He had just completed, on a CdM lower-level team, a season of basketball, for which he had always had an abiding affection.
“Basketball was my first love,” Gaal said. “I always thought I couldn’t do without it. But my skill level was going down and I just didn’t have the passion.”
His lack of passion in general, he said, prompted his parents to enroll him in the Army-Navy Academy in Carlsbad to start the 2009-10 school year.
“My parents decided it would be good for me to grow up and see how the rest of the world is; to figure out life,” Gaal said. “Being at Army-Navy opened up my eyes and made me see I had to get my act together. It showed me I had to focus on things that count in life. After three months there, we all decided it would be better for me to come back to CdM.”
Gaal said that return meant a reconnection with childhood friends, many of whom were key members of the soccer team.
