Life After Heat: Debts, Threats of Legal Action : Soccer: Despite the folding of the pro soccer team, former owners have plenty of headaches.

They trotted onto the football field at El Camino College a year ago with the name of a shoe manufacturer on the back of their red-and-white uniforms.

Uninspired, the players of the Los Angeles Heat lost their American Professional Soccer League West opener to the Colorado Foxes, 3-1, before a crowd of only 500 in 12,000-seat Murdock Stadium.

The attendance debacle cost the team $12,000 and its performance on the field didn’t gain it any respect. The following week, a columnist for La Opinion, the Spanish-language daily newspaper, wrote that the Heat couldn’t defeat the national B team from El Salvador.

Five months later, the regrouped Heat advanced into the league championship series. Then in January, the team folded.

There’s a good chance that within a year the Heat may be rekindled in a proposed new league. But for now, fallout from the team’s demise continues. Specifically:

* More than $30,000 in bills remains unpaid, including a $2,200 tab for use of Veterans Stadium in Long Beach for the first game of the league championship series against the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks in September.

* A former owner of the Heat wants to sue the old APSL West, which has merged with a sister league. The owner says the West still holds $30,000 of Heat money.

* The former chairman of the APSL West says the Heat crippled the league when it let a deadline to post additional bond money pass last fall. He says he will countersue for substantially more than $30,000 in damages.

* A lawyer representing a former Heat player has contacted a former owner about possible legal action to recover costs he allegedly incurred from a practice injury.

THE FINAL SEASON

The Heat, considered by many soccer experts to be the most talented team in the league, struggled early. By late July, it was in last place in the Southern Division of the APSL West.

The coach, Bobby Sibbald, refused to talk to the media, and crowds for home games at the West Torrance High field were dismal.

Players openly criticized management. At once-a-week practices, little strategic planning occurred. Much of the time the team simply divided into groups and scrimmaged.

Off the field, troubles were starting.

Bills went unpaid. At least once the team didn’t pay its employees on time. When publicity director Dawn Smith failed to receive a paycheck, club president John Ajemian dug into his pockets, pulled out a wad of $100 bills and paid her in cash.

On two occasions, checks for the team received from an owner bounced. The checks were made good a week later, but players got the message: Those who took their checks to the bank first had the best chance of getting them cashed.

In early August, Ajemian announced to the media that the team would move to Orange County when the season ended. Not until after he made the announcement did he begin to look for a place to play. He was unable to find a suitable facility.

Record company executive Lionel Conway, citing personal problems, backed out of a promise to buy 25% of the team. That left only two men--Ajemian and South Bay brass manufacturer Roland Martin--to fund the team’s $560,000 budget, which had soared more than $250,000 above preseason estimates.

In August the players rallied and put together a string of victories that eventually led them to the league championship series against San Francisco.

The Heat eventually lost the series and from that moment on, the team, for all intent and purposes, was dead.

THE LEAGUE

The APSL West was actually a bunch of higher-paying semiprofessional clubs trying to step up a notch. The recession and an insensitive U.S. Soccer Federation killed the league, former team owners say.

Seven of the 11 APSL West franchises, including the Heat, folded, as did five franchises in the APSL East.

Remnants of both halves of the 22-team APSL have merged into one nine-team national league (still called the APSL) that began a 21-game season last weekend.

Just about everyone in the APSL West expected to lose money last season. Most of the teams ran on shoestring budgets. Crowd counts were uneven.

To cut costs, for example, the Heat did not have a medical plan for employees. Nor did it have workman’s compensation insurance for its players.

Still, said Heat chairman Dan Olson: “We had this wonderful league going (that could grow) at a pace we were satisfied with.”

As with many soccer groups, the owners came from diverse ethnic backgrounds and were divided over how the league should be run. The Salt Lake Sting, for example, was owned by the same company that ran the city’s minor-league Trappers baseball team, while the owner of the Portland Storm sold his cleaning business and invested his life savings into the team.

With the World Cup scheduled to be held in the United States in 1994, the owners of the 11 APSL West clubs that opened the 1990 season hoped to prove to the U.S. Soccer Federation that their teams were professional enough to be chosen to play in a proposed U.S. professional league, mandated by FIFA, the international governing body of soccer.

Last fall, word leaked about a Soccer Federation committee on professionalism plan requiring each team in that league to post non-refundable $2.5-million bonds.

The federation was also said to be considering team operating budgets in excess of $1 million a season. Most of the APSL teams had budgets less than half that size.

Although the federation never made its plan public and has since backed off formally from the $2.5-million figure, the news was a fatal blow to the APSL West and may have damaged the future of professional soccer in this country.

Reported the New York Times in a story in February: “The reduction of the (APSL), currently the nation’s main outdoor league, by more than half will undoubtedly delay the formation of a professional league by the (federation).”

Explained Heat owner Martin: “When the USSF got involved and started talking about that $2.5-million bond, a few people in the league thought that this was it. (We were through).”

Said former Heat general manager Dick White: “The (owners of the Heat) were nice people, good local business people, but they were not the kind of people who were in that league (being able to raise $2.5 million).”

The recession also made it more difficult to raise money for a sport that most Americans dismiss as boring.

Of the APSL West teams, only Colorado, San Francisco and Salt Lake City remain. Seattle, run by former APSL West commissioner Bill Sage, remains inactive but plans to begin play in 1992. Sage has been named a co-chairman of the new league, which began play earlier this month.

The restructured APSL has refused to return about $30,000 in bond money to Martin, who has requested it. Two other defunct franchises also did not receive refunds on bond money when they folded.

Martin contends that the Heat should receive that money, saying it could be used to help pay debts. He said that since the APSL West technically no longer exists, it shouldn’t be allowed to keep the bond. He contends the money is being used to fund the new APSL.

Sage says the Heat forfeited the money when it folded and that the APSL West has legal ground in keeping the money because it did not fold, but merely merged with the East.

Martin has threatened the APSL with a lawsuit. Sage says the APSL would countersue.

Said Martin of Sage: “He’s the guy who did this league in.”

Sage, according to Martin and Ajemian, told team owners at the league meeting in Boston in September that it was “every man for himself,” thereby creating a climate in which several teams chose not to go on. Sage was also accused of placing the interests of his Seattle club above that of the league.

Said Olson, who spoke for the Heat at the meeting: “There were a couple (of people from teams) who were really acting as individuals rather than as representatives of the league.”

Michael Hogue, a member of the USSF professional committee and former owner of the Heat who lives in Torrance, said he warned some of the teams in the APSL that talk of a $2.5-million bond was only a rumor.

“There was a major communication breakdown by Sage (when speaking to the owners). . . . I believe he never put anything down on paper,” Hogue said. “That being the case, no wonder the league folded.”

But the league had other problems.

Although Salt Lake City was twice able to draw crowds of 10,000, fan support remained much lower in major metropolitan areas. The Heat routinely drew less than 1,000 to its home games.

The crowd was so small for the final game Sept. 12 in San Jose that Blackhawk management never released an official count. A Bay Area writer in the press box estimated the attendance at 3,800, which was 300 more than former Heat general manager Jill Fracisco had released as the Heat’s total in Long Beach. Both figures appeared to be highly inflated.

In Long Beach, for example, the crowd was pumped up by allowing youth soccer teams, who participated in a pregame parade, to watch for free.

Fracisco, who used to promote international soccer matches at Spartan Stadium, estimated the San Jose crowd at 1,500. A week later, when San Francisco traveled to Boston to play the Maryland Bays for the APSL championship, the crowd was equally dismal.

When the economy turned sour last fall, Martin’s business dipped 60%. Ajemian, who had just purchased a new gas station in Torrance, was also feeling the pinch.

“We’re not out of this because of cost overruns,” said Martin, whose interest in soccer dates back to his days as a youth coach in Torrance. “We’re out of it because of the USSF and a bad economy.”

THE FRONT OFFICE

Fracisco, 26, a native of San Jose, wanted desperately to take the Heat into her own back yard and come out a winner in the championship against the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks in September.

But when Fracisco arrived, she heard rumors that she was about to be fired, win or lose.

That proved to be the case. Owners had told The Times privately several weeks earlier that Fracisco would be fired after the season was over. They had already decided to hire longtime South Bay promoter White.

The reasons behind the decision to release Fracisco were unclear, but some of the owners apparently thought she was too close to the players.

Just how and why the team ran up such huge debts is hard to figure out. But it is safe to say that everyone involved with the Heat deserves some of the blame.

The list of bills is almost comical. Plaques for most-valuable-player awards cost $100 a game. They were budgeted at $10 each. Rather than taking advantage of discount air fares by reserving flights when the league schedule was released, the team often made flight plans only days before departure, running up thousands of dollars in extra costs.

A few players working at Heat youth camps were paid more for a week’s work than was budgeted for the entire camp, about $250. Although the team was $250,000 over budget, owners voted to give players postseason bonuses.

Necessary business paperwork routinely went unfinished. Player Peter Skouras suffered a severe hamstring injury in practice but was denied medical benefits by the league’s insurance carrier because the claim was not filed within the required 30 days. Martin is now paying Skouras, who has retained a lawyer, for medical expenses.

Fracisco says she ran up $4,000 in charges on her personal credit card for Heat business. “I refused to put my name on checks that I know were no good,” she said. She also says the Heat owes her $2,000 in back pay.

The owners say Fracisco was a spendthrift.

When White replaced Fracisco, he says he discovered that “it basically appeared that nothing had been done with anything since the end of June” and that no plans had been made for the following year.

“It’s probably just as much (the owners’) fault (as it was Fracisco’s) for not staying on top of it, too,” White said. “The (owners) should accept part of the blame.”

Both parties are hesitant to criticize each other. They just want the memory of the Heat to disappear. Fracisco and several owners chalk it up as a learning experience.

White’s tenure--about three months--was anything but smooth. He not only faced monumental bills, but was unable to carry out Ajemian’s plan to find the team a better place to play.

White leaned hard on contacts at El Camino, where he was a member of the school’s fund-raising board, but he was unable to get the college to give the Heat a break on its $3,100 price tag to rent Murdock Stadium. Martin and Ajemian then decided they wanted to play in Long Beach, but nothing materialized.

The White era ended bitterly in December when he told the staff, including Smith, that their pay would be cut 50%. But without money, he couldn’t even write checks for half their salaries, so he wrote none at all.

Three months later Ajemian reached into his pockets and paid Smith again.

THE OWNERS

The lineup of exotic cars waiting to be serviced at Ajemian’s Union 76 gasoline station on the corner of Olympic Boulevard and Bundy Drive on the Westside never seems to end.

Ajemian runs the station as part of a family-owned string of ventures that includes other service stations, real estate and farmland near Fresno. Some miles away in Torrance, Martin, one of four original owners of the team in 1986, oversees production in his brass company.

They never expected to make money as part-owners of a soccer team. But neither did they expect to have to fold the Heat, or be responsible alone for the remaining bills, which they pay off weekly when they can spare money from their businesses.

Ironically, Ajemian, who estimated that he invested more than $200,000, had no legal claim as an owner because no legal documents were ever finalized giving him and Martin the 50% interest they wanted. However, the APSL West, according to Sage, voted to recognize Ajemian as an owner of the Heat soon after he agreed to buy a portion of the team.

Dave Graefe, a Heat founder who put in $50,000 in 1986, has not funded the team since. Eugene Schiappa, another founder who invested an estimated $40,000, owned the building that housed the Heat’s office. From time to time, he contributed money, but his construction business suffered from the recession and he soon backed out.

Olson served in the ceremonial role of club chairman. He put together the Heat’s budget.

The Heat was a part-time occupation for all of them and seldom did they take an active role in the team’s front-office decisions.

Martin talks about restarting the Heat a year from now if plans for a statewide league become reality. He figures that will cost $25,000 a year. Graefe says he will support Martin, and he believes Ajemian will jump in, possibly as the team’s general manager.

THE PLAYERS

Former Heat players are scattered around the country. At least a six play for the Exiles, a semiprofessional club team based in Manhattan Beach that competes in the Pacific Soccer League.

“Everyone is very depressed about the Heat folding,” former Heat midfielder Joey Flanagan said. “After the success of last season, everyone was really looking forward to this year.”

Four former players competed in the indoor Major Soccer League last winter. Four have signed with APSL teams. Two more are expected to sign soon.