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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

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Teammates turned rivals

Former Hoosiers compete in MLS championship

They played on the same grass field for the last time in 1997, when the men's soccer team lost to UCLA in the NCAA Final Four in Richmond, Va. They left behind a 23-game winning streak crushed by the Bruins in a triple-overtime loss.\nChris Klein, went on to a professional soccer career with the Kansas City Wizards after the 1997 campaign. Dema Kovalenko stayed at IU for the 1998 season, when the Hoosiers won their fourth NCAA championship. He then left school a year early and joined the Chicago Fire in 1999. \nNick Garcia and Yuri Lavrinenko earned national championship rings in 1998 and 1999, and then began their rookie Major League Soccer careers in 2000 with the Wizards and Fire, respectively.\nSunday, the four former IU players will return to the same field, as the league's greatest offensive team, the Fire, and the best defensive squad, the Wizards, face off in the MLS championship game at 12:30 p.m. at RFK Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C.\nThis time, only two former Hoosiers will get rings.\n"I'm sure even though we're friends we're going to take care of business," Garcia said.\nGarcia has already narrowly missed another accolade. He received 32 percent of the votes for the 2000 Kellogg's Rookie of the Year Wednesday, but Carlos Bocanegra of the Fire got 34 percent, winning the annual award.\nAlthough Garcia was IU coach Jerry Yeagley's choice for Rookie of the Year over the former UCLA player, Yeagley won't go on the record to say who he wants to win Sunday's game.\nOthers are less discreet.\n"I'm going for this kid," said former IU soccer player Aleksey Korol, referring to Kovalenko. Korol plays for the Dallas Burn, which was knocked out of the playoffs in the first round. "I've got to go for my countryman. He's my best boy. I go with Chicago, but I'd be happy for Nick and Chris Klein, that's for sure."\nThe Wizards (16-7-9) and the Fire (17-9-6) each had the league's most amount of points at 57 for the regular season, based on wins and ties. The regular season series was tied at 1-1, with Klein and Kovalenko scoring in Kansas City's 4-3 win.\nGarcia, a defender, started all 32 regular-season games for the Wizards, and was one of two players on the team to play every minute of the season. While Garcia started immediately as a 21-year-old, Kovalenko, Lavrinenko and Klein struggled in their rookie seasons.\nAn All-Big Ten First Team selection his senior year at IU, Klein had to improve his defensive skills as a wide midfielder once he entered MLS. In turn, he has developed into a better two-way player, Wizards coach Bob Gansler said. At 6-foot-1, Klein has tremendous speed and is national team material, Yeagley said.\nIn 1998, Klein started just eight games and didn't score a goal or an assist. In 27 games this season, Klein scored six goals and tallied eight assists.\n"He's been playing wide, defending more and is a big part of the play-making," Gansler said. "He's been an offensive contributor. He's an exciting young player. If anything, he's too nice. Sometimes, we have to tell him it's OK to foul. Nick doesn't have that problem."\nGarcia's maturity is what has helped him adjust to his first year in MLS, Gansler said.\nOn the other hand, the change to a more physical game in MLS was a problem for Kovalenko. He said he thought he was ready to get a lot of playing time in his rookie season, but learned he wasn't prepared to play against national team veterans who had significant international experience. The Fire acquired him as a Project-40 player from the Burn for the fourth and 12th overall picks in the 1999 college draft.\nKovalenko blossomed in 2000 as he scored 10 goals for the Fire. He gained wisdom from veterans like midfielder Peter Nowak, a captain for the Polish national team, and Hristo Stoitchkov, who has played in the Bulgarian Premier League.\n"This year I just came in and learned," Kovalenko said. "You have to be patient. When your time comes, you just have to take advantage of it."\nLavrinenko played 55 minutes for the Fire this season, the least amount on the team. He started one game.\n"Yuri is, in many ways, in a similar situation Dema was the first year," Chicago Fire coach Bob Bradley said. "At IU, he was one of the players who could make the couple passes that could determine the outcome of a game. Now he has to adjust to become a more all-around player. He has to learn how to defend.\n"Often in college, they're on a team with three or four good players. In MLS, that's no longer the case. Now they are required to be more complete players, and that's an adjustment."\nThe former IU players said the school's soccer program allowed them to make the transition to the professional level with relative ease. IU handles everything from its weight system to its training program at an expert level, Klein said.\nSince 1996, 14 IU soccer players have competed in MLS.\n"It's not a coincidence that these two guys (Garcia and Klein) -- we could be talking about Korol and Kovalenko -- it's a big slew of Indiana players in the MLS," Gansler said. "It's a great apprenticeship, the way they're nurturing college players into professionals"

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