Los Angeles Police Department's Soccer Program: LAPD Wins Gold Medal at LA Sheriff's Spring Soccer Cup Tournament

Front Row L/R:

Brian Rivas, Mark Hubert, Joel Dominguez, Elias Aguayo, Kenny Pintado, Julio Castillo-Lopez & Carlos Marco.

Back Row Standing L/R:

Scott Burkett, Ofcr Hernandez, Pascualy Salado, Rafael Virrueta, Joey Stevenson, Hugo Virrueta, Jim Erwin, Kevin , Edgar Ramos, Kevin Bonilla, C0ach Bumpy Marco, Coach Hugo Cepeida and Coach Don Barfield

May 21/22, 2011, the LAPD Soccer Team played in the 3^rd annual LA County Sheriff’s Spring Soccer Cup, held at Mount San Antonio College. Eight teams from law enforcement, fire agencies and local “club teams” competed in this two day tournament.

Our first game pitted us against our old nemesis, the LA City Fire Department. Their team is always one that proves to be a challenge for us as they are a highly skilled and fit team.

As the game progressed, it was a back and forth battle for goals. LAPD scored first, but that only seemed to awaken the Fire Department team as they came back shortly tying the game. Those scenarios played out again and again as one team would score, the other would shortly counter and score. In the end, LAPD prevailed winning a close 4-3 victory.

Next was the LA School Police. They are a young aggressive team that is in their building stages. They are a scrappy bunch that continues to challenge our players. Again LAPD advanced with a win, 3-1 over the School Police.

On the next day of competition, we drew one of the local “club” soccer team. These are players that dedicate themselves to playing the highest quality of soccer and are extremely competitive. This was a low scoring game with advantages being missed by both teams. It was a physically challenging game, but when the dust settled and the game was over, LAPD again moved forward to the finals with a narrow 2-1 victory over Cruz Azul Club Soccer.

The finals put us against another “club soccer” team, Jalisco. They had not lost any of their qualifying games, nor had LAPD. This was to be a great finally to the tournament. With the stakes high, LAPD began attacking the ball and did not give Jalisco time to organize their game. Within 10 minutes, LAPD scored their first goal. That seemed to rattle the Jalisco players. They appeared confused and thus LAPD seeing that continued to attack. That again paid off with another goal. Now it was 2-0, LAPD.

Jalisco, being a proud team, came at us with a flurry of shots on our goal. Our defense was solid and turned away each and every attempt to score. LAPD was poised as Jalisco pushed their whole team forward to add pressure on our defense in hopes of scoring. Seeing that mistake, LAPD countered with speed and accuracy to score a final goal winning the championship game 3-0 and thus taking 1^st Place in the tournament.

We wish to thank the host of this tournament, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and their coach, Ruben Nava for an exciting and well organized and efficient tournament.

The LAPD Soccer Team is coached by Det II Hugo Cepeida, Det II Horacio Marco (ret.) and Det II Don Barfield (ret.). If anyone is interested in the LAPD Soccer Program, please contact Det Cepeida at 22064@lapd.lacity.org , or Det Barfield at D2Barfield@gmail.com We are always looking for good caliber soccer players to represent the Department in various soccer tournaments locally and throughout the nation.

The following are action photos of the tournament taken by Don Barfield. To view the photos in a larger format, click on the photo of choice to expand it.