THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 7, 1994 TAG: 9410070746
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRED KIRSCH, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
Ask Danny McVey where he has spent his last 10 birthday weekends and he doesn't have to think very long.
Where else?
``Playing in the Virginia Beach Columbus Day soccer tournament.''
One year McVey's folks had to bring the cake out to the field and serve it between games to squeeze in the party.
Another year, everyone got so caught up in the tournament, it was late Sunday night when it occurred to McVey, ``Hey, we forgot my birthday.''
But that's cool with McVey, who turns 18 today. There's no other place Danny McVey would rather be than on a soccer field. And there haven't been many birthdays that he hasn't gotten to celebrate by banging in a goal or two.
Nobody in local high school soccer puts the ball in the net like the Tallwood senior. Last spring, McVey drilled home 28 goals in only 14 games for the Lions and was named All-Tidewater and second-team all-state. In one game last year, he had three goals in three minutes.
McVey was a 4-foot-tall scoring whiz celebrating his 9th birthday when he showed up at the first Virginia Beach Columbus Day Soccer Tournament. Both Danny Boy - as his buddies call him - and the tourney have done a lot of growing since then.
McVey is now 6-foot-1, 150 pounds, and the tournament, which begins Saturday, has multiplied into a festival that attracts nearly 5,000 players and more than 300 teams from 13 states and Canada.
``The competition is tremendous,'' says McVey, who will play on the Beach FC Fury in the U-19 premier division and will go up against some of the best teams on the East Coast. This year's tourney features Wexford, Ontario's U-13, one of Canada's top teams, as well as such powerhouses as Vista (Va.) Blackwatch's U-19s.
``In the first years I played, teams from other areas were stronger. But soccer has really come on here. We can hold our own with anyone. It's a chance to prove soccer here is as good as anywhere.''
Danny McVey has no idea when he started playing soccer.
``I guess I must have been about 2,'' he says. ``That's when they tell me my brothers and sister started taking me out in the yard.''
At 2, says McVey's mom, Bunny, the kid could drop kick a soccer ball. Off walls. Lamps. Screen doors.
At 3, he was putting moves on in backyard scrimmages. At 5, he had rec league goalies trembling in fear. As a ninth-grader in junior high, he was starting on the Tallwood varsity.
The McVey house has a paid a price for all this.
``When I was little,'' says Danny, laughing, ``we couldn't have any plants in the backyard. And I was always breaking stuff inside kicking the ball around.
``I guess that's where I learned about scoring. I've just always been able to score,'' says McVey, who has also connected for seven extra points and two field goals as the Tallwood football team's kicker.
``I think it's a lot mental. You have to think you can score. And I'm always thinking, `Goal.' It's like blinking in my head.
``When you get that break in the defense, and you can sense, `This is it,' there's just no feeling like it.''
McVey says he got the feeling from his brothers Tom, who's 31, and Chris, 29 (who is coaching a U-16 team in the tournament) and sister Kerry, 27.
They gave him something to shoot at.
Tom scored 50 goals in high school, and Chris scored 55. Kerry had 49 when she was at Green Run.
When Danny, who has 45 goals, puts in his first goal this spring for Tallwood, it will be the McVey family's 200th.
``You can teach players the skills to score goals, but you can't teach scoring,'' says Craig Melton, the Fury's coach. ``That's something a kid has or doesn't. And Danny has it.''
It's all added up to McVey being only one of three players in Virginia on the Region I Olympic Development Program's 1976 team and a boxful of letters in the living room from top-20 college soccer programs.
But McVey doesn't have much time for contemplating the future and ``all that stuff.''
When's he's not at soccer or football practice, he's up in his room, which has a big Irish flag on the wall and is filled with soccer trophies and gear, listening to his House of Pain tapes or hitting the books.
``I'm a pretty solid student,'' says McVey, who has been slowed some by a bad ankle this fall and expects to see limited action this weekend. ``But I have to work on it. I want to go to the best school I can.
``And play at the highest level I can. The Olympics? That's just a dream. I've got a long way to go. Right now, I'm just thinking about this weekend's tournament.''
And scoring a few goals. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff
Danny McVey, a senior at Tallwood High in Virginia Beach, has played
in every Virginia Beach Columbus Day soccer tournament.
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