After a successful run as Rosamond High School’s girls soccer coach, Eddie Corletto has taken the same position at Lompoc High School.
Corletto is a special education teacher at La Honda Elementary School in Lompoc. He lives in Santa Maria. “Our family moved to the Central Coast this year,” Corletto said.
During his four years at Rosamond, the Roadrunners won the CIF Central Section Division 5 championship in 2017. They repeated as Division 5 champs in 2018.
“I’ve been coaching soccer a long time -- high school, club group -- and I usually take a break after four- or five-year stints,” said Corletto.
“But the opening at Lompoc was posted, and I was finding it hard to stay away from the game. I wasn’t feeling particularly burned out and, with my wife’s blessing, I took the job.”
He said he has been able to meet with his team on Zoom and, at press time, Corletto said he was planning for his team to have its first on-campus workout, in pods, this week.
“It went very well,” Corletto said of the Zoom meeting.
“About 30 girls attended.”
Corletto comes into a Lompoc program that is coming off its best season in memory.
The Braves won the Channel League championship and made it to the second round of the playoffs under longtime coach Jason Cochrane, who built the program to its current status as a perennial league title contender.
Lompoc lost a lot of the best players from that team to graduation but the Braves do have some talent returning. 11 players on that 2020 team were underclassmen.
“Lompoc is a successful program,” said Corletto.
“I’m excited. We have talent. We have to create a program where the players have a chance to develop it.”
As for the loss of all those stalwarts from the 2020 Lompoc program, Corletto said he has faced that kind of challenge before.
“At Rosamond, we had lost seven seniors, including four starters, from the 2017 team,” going into the 2018 season, Corletto said.
“We just told the girls, ‘Look, it’s easy to say, OK, we won CIF, where do we go from here. I told the kids, ‘Hey, this will give other players a chance to succeed.’”
When it comes to how the Lompoc program goes about things, “We want the JV players to do exactly what the varsity players are doing,” said Corletto.
He also wants what he considers an upgrade in his team’s tournament schedule.
“Last year, the team didn’t play in one tournament in Riverside or San Bernardino,” said Corletto.
“I want our team to play down there and get exposure to a different competition level.”
Bloomington defeated Lompoc in the second round of the CIF Southern Section playoffs in 2020.
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Arroyo Grande's Drew Baskin signed to play baseball with Willamette during a ceremony near Talley Fields in Arroyo Grande.
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Arroyo Grande's Kahlia Jensen, Drew Baskin, Justin Trimble, Makenna Wolfe, Makai Lipson, Peyton Dunkle and Madelyn Ferreros signed with various colleges to continue their athletic careers at a ceremony near Tally Fields in Arroyo Grande.