Sockers May Have Viewed Final Episode of Dynasty

TACOMA, Wash. — And so it is over. Officially. Unequivocally.

After five years of glory, the Sockers’ dynasty has ended. Or is it only interrupted?

Getting back to the top of this game obviously will be an obsession with Ron Newman, the coach for each of those five championship years.

Newman, in fact, has an idea how Dennis Conner felt after the America’s Cup went down under in 1983.

To him, a championship is as priceless as the Cup.

“Maybe losing it will give it that much more importance in San Diego,” Newman said. “America’s Cup didn’t get that much recognition until we lost it. Maybe getting the championship back will be more interesting than trying to keep it.”

Conner went to Newport, R.I., and lost the America’s Cup for the first time after all those years. The Sockers came to Tacoma and lost an indoor soccer championship for the first time since anyone has been paying attention to indoor soccer.

Maybe there are parallels here.

The United States had the America’s Cup for 152 years, but it was stored rather anonymously at the stodgy New York Yacht Club. It was not really as if the United States had it at all, and the populace did not really appreciate what it had and what it took to keep it until it was no longer on the continent.

What got the attention of butchers in Bismarck and bakers in Bangor was getting it back.

No one paid any attention to the Sockers, even in San Diego, until their drive to their first indoor championship in 1981-82. That was in the North American Soccer League, which thought at the time that indoor would be an interesting “off-season” pursuit while the outdoor game was getting established.

What has happened, of course, is that both the outdoor game and the NASL have disappeared hereabouts. What the Sockers lost Thursday night was a chance to once again play in the Major Indoor Soccer League finals. Tacoma will be there instead, facing Dallas in a series matching two teams that did not exist when the Soccers began their run at the top of this Americanized version of what is probably the world’s favorite athletic pastime.

What the Sockers were left to contemplate was getting something back that had been forever in their possession.

And there is no mistaking that the road to the MISL finals no longer runs through San Diego. It runs through Tacoma instead.

This is an interesting phenomenon because Tacoma has always been a place to drive through on the way to Seattle.

When it comes to sports, and maybe most other things, Seattle has had it all . . . and Tacoma has had nothing.

Seattle has the National Football League Seahawks, the National Basketball Assn. SuperSonics, the Pacific 10 University of Washington and, ahem, George Argyros and the American League Mariners. OK, so Seattle isn’t perfect.

Tacoma had been bypassed by the world of major college and professional sports, overshadowed by its northern neighbor as surely as all of this area is overshadowed by the majesty of Mount Rainier.

However, Tacoma had its moment Thursday night. A raucous crowd of 16,074 watched the local heroes, the only local heroes, unseat the perennial indoor kings. It was celebrated as if this were the final series, and maybe it should have been.

The headline in Friday’s Tacoma newspaper was one word: “Starstruck.”

This was definitely a year when the Stars had it. They were described in the story as “upstarts”--but no description could be further from the truth, unless one chooses to presume that anyone with the audacity to beat the Sockers has to be an upstart.

Tacoma was simply the best of the two teams in the Western Division championship series. There was nothing lucky about the fact that the Stars won. It would only have been an upset if they hadn’t.

Indeed, what was amazing was that the Sockers managed to take the series to a seventh game. It might even have been amazing that the Sockers were even in the series.

“We could just as easily been knocked out in the first round against Kansas City,” said defender Brian Quinn. “We’ve been a .500 team all year, winning two, losing two, winning one, losing one.”

The Sockers had struggled to finish 27-25, settling for an unaccustomed third place in the West. And it was a struggle to defeat second-place Kansas City in the first round of the playoffs.

However, the fact that the end was near for the Sockers was very apparent in last year’s playoffs. It took a miracle to win that fifth championship, rallying from a 3-1 deficit to beat Minnesota in the finals.

It was very clear then that the dynasty was wavering.

To their credit, the Sockers did not come crashing down. They went out battling, and almost got themselves into the finals once again. If they could have gotten past Tacoma, it’s doubtful Dallas could have stopped them from going all the way once again.

As it was, there was no joy of six.

What has happened is that the Sockers have now experienced the rude awakening they dodged a year ago. They now confront the realization that changes--Newman said “drastic” changes--must be ahead.

In essence, the Sockers have been beaten by their version of a winged keel. They ran into superior opposition, and a dynasty ended.

So now they go into their think tank, trying to fit the parts together to be swifter and more efficient. The edge they had is gone.

Dennis Conner had to go south to retrieve what he lost. The Sockers will find what they misplaced in Tacoma.