PDL Feature
Thursday, July 26, 2012
By any measure, the Sounders FC U23’s first season in the PDL has been a success. Acquiring and then rebranding the PDL’s Tacoma Tide in the past offseason, hiring former Sounders player, assistant coach and current club Academy Director Darren Sawatzky as the team’s coach and building a squad made up of the parent club’s academy program allowed the side to go from worst to first in the consistently tough Northwest Division.
But for Sawatzky, the team’s success has been a by-product of the quality of player the club has been able to attract. With many of the squad on the Sounders FC homegrown player list, the competitive environment the PDL offers has been important to the players’ development as they try to advance to the next level.
“We look to them as future professionals,” Sawatzky said. “Really, this is a development team for our first team, we always coach to win, but in reality this team is a place for our players to grow and get better to eventually wear rave green in front of 40,000 one day.”
It’s certainly very different than when Sawatzky was in college in the early 1990s, when he attended the University of Portland. Back then, Sawatzky said, summer conditioning depended on whether you could get some friends to come over and play three-v-three in the back yard.
By contrast, the clubs in the Northwest Division, and throughout the rest of the PDL, now offer the opportunity for players to get organized training and competitive games before they return to college. In cases like the Sounders, it also offers clubs a chance to continue to monitor players up close, and players a chance to impress enough to potentially turn professional soon.
“These kids up here in the I-5 corridor in Seattle, there’s seven or eight teams up and down that freeway that give you a place to play very competitive games in the summer to prepare you for the fall,” Sawatzky said. “It’s been unbelievable.”
So has much of the Sounders’ play. From their dramatic 1-0 victory against the Portland Timbers U23s on June 2 that saw Jamael Cox score the game-winning goal in stoppage time, to their 2-1 win against the Kitsap Pumas on July 6 that saw the side score twice in the final five minutes and claim top spot in the division, which it would not relinquish for the rest of the season, the Sounders have found ways to win against their toughest opponents.
Part of the reason for that has been the attitude shown by the players. Currently on a nine-game winning streak, including the playoffs, the side has found ways to win, whether through tough defensive displays or remarkable attacking outbursts.
“We talk about ‘team first’ here,” Sawatzky said. “We look to everyone to step up and do their part, because if you’re going to win championships, you need a lot of things to happen, and the biggest thing is a complete buy-in from all the players. Leadership by group.”
The Sounders’ players certainly appear to have bought in, especially at the defensive end. Goalkeeper Doug Herrick had a 0.933 goals-against average, while defender DeAndre Yedlin has been one of the best in the conference throughout the season. That defensive solidity was also helped by the knowledge imparted by Sawatzky from his soccer education, much of which came from his college coach, and Portland Timbers legend, Clive Charles.
“Clive was a left back at the highest level and he was an unbelievable coach,” Sawatzky said. “We just played against Rick Shantz’s FC Tucson team down in the playoffs, and Rick also came up in the Clive Charles coaching school. I think you’ll find that anybody that played for Clive out there in the coaching world, their teams are fundamentally sound on the defensive side of the ball.
“It’s something he taught all of us, and we defend well, but the modern game is both sides of it, so we try to defend well as a group, and we try to attack in an exciting fashion and try to entertain fans too.”
The Sounders have certainly provided that so far this season, with five players having scored at least four goals in the regular season and Darwin Jones scoring in both of their wins this past weekend. As successful as the club has been to this point of the season, however, there is still work to be done.
“We took over the Tide franchise, and last year they won one game, so to go from being in the cellar to making it to the national final four is obviously very exciting, but to be honest with you nobody gets in this to take second place,” Sawatzky said. “We’re not there yet, it’s fun to get this far, but no-one ever talks about who the runner-up was.”