Live Oak's Daley named Coach of the Year

As a rookie head coach faced with numerous challenges, Aaron Daley found success.

Three weeks before the start of the season, Daley took over the Live Oak High girls soccer team.

The Lions' best player — the former coach's daughter who tallied 52 percent of the teams goals last year — was not returning. Neither were three other solid athletes, who all opted to play basketball instead.

So, less than a month before the Lions kicked off their 2008-2009 campaign, the 25-year-old was left with the remnants of a squad which went 8-9-2 and lost by a pair of goals in the first round of the playoffs.

When this season finished, Daley had led the team to its first winning

season in years and to an unlikely playoff victory over Orland before falling in the Northern Section Division II semifinals.

Not bad for a team that had little practice time, faced solid competition and had to tape numbers onto T-shirts for jerseys at the beginning of the season. For what the Lions achieved, The Appeal-Democrat has named Daley the All-Area Coach of the Year.

"I had a lot of girls who were trying to learn the game," Daley said. "I didn't think it was going to be easy."

But that didn't mean Daley wasn't ready to get to work. An assistant to Jason Spain at Sutter and Yuba College, Daley knew that it would take more than just drills to make the Lions competitive.

"Some girls had athletic ability and others had to get that skill set," he said. "There were a lot of groups of different girls and friends, and as the season came along they all became friends."

And that mixture of camaraderie and improved play was a direct result of Daley, said one of his standout players.

"He worked us real good and taught us a lot of stuff we didn't know," said defender Rocio Topete. He wasn't too tough, but he could still be hard and he made it a really good season."

But there is nothing comical about the Lions' turnaround.

In the playoffs, the fifth-seeded Lions fell to No. 1 Rio-Vista 1-0 in overtime. The Rams (14-2-2), would go onto win the section title with a 5-0 victory. Regardless of the loss, just being in the semifinals was enough to get the campus to take notice.

"I was really pumped up after that," Daley said. "The whole school was pretty excited."