PDL Feature
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
When he entered Sunday’s game against Portugal for the U.S. Men’s National Team, DeAndre Yedlin made another small piece of history.
The first MLS Homegrown Player signing to be selected for a World Cup squad became the first MLS Homegrown Player to appear in the tournament. As he watched, Sounders FC U-23 coach Darren Sawatzky couldn’t help but feel great happiness for a player he’s seen grow for many, many years.
“He was one of those kids you could tell was special,” Sawatzky said by phone this week. “I’ve been around him since he was 9, 10 years old, and he’s a kid that goes at it with a voracious intensity. I don’t think I can ever remember DeAndre cruising in a training session. He’s a guy that plays every single competition to win, and it’s served him well.”
Prior to his work with the Sounders U-23 and Academy, Sawatzky ran the Olympic Development Program in Washington. Yedlin featured in the program and even earned selection to the Super Y League’s National Select Team in 2007 and 2008, before he joined the Sounders Academy.
There, he earned consecutive berths on the USSF Development Academy Select Team, and a call-up to the U.S. U18 National Team, before joining the University of Akron and renowned coach Caleb Porter.
“I think Caleb was a professional coach coaching in the college game,” Sawatzky said. “You can see that he coaches a little bit differently; he’s a bit more modern. It’s actually exciting and great to see coaches coaching that way, because it’s more modern, and I think DeAndre benefited from that because Caleb chose to play in a way where it was more attractive soccer. He definitely wanted results, but he wanted it in the right style, and he definitely benefited from that.”
In addition to his experience at Akron, Yedlin returned to the Pacific Northwest to be part of the Sounders U-23’s inaugural season in 2012. The summer was a rousing success, as Yedlin was not only able to train alongside the Sounders first team regularly, but also played every minute of every game to earn All-PDL honors and lead the side to a Western Conference Championship.
That summer certainly had a lot of highlights, but Sawatzky points to one game in particular that showed Yedlin’s competitiveness and ability at its peak.
“We were playing at Kitsap, and I wouldn’t say they’re a rival of ours, but it’s always a really good game,” Sawatzky said. “They had beaten us twice, and we went to Kitsap for the third game, and with about 10 minutes to go here’s my right back with this big poufy hair who comes flying down the right-hand side and jumps over the top of the center back and heads the ball in the back of the net to win the game 2-1. So not only was he doing the job on the defensive side, he basically took that game over and said we’re going to win it, and that set us off on our run to the semifinals that year.”
After a second standout season at Akron, the Sounders had seen enough and made Yedlin the first Homegrown signing in club history. From there his ascent has continued at the same pace, with a standout rookie season that led to a winter call-up from Jürgen Klinsmann, and eventually a history-making berth on this summer’s World Cup roster.
“We say this to kids all the time in the developmental pyramid that we work in, you’ve got to seize the day, you’ve got to seize the opportunity,” Sawatzky said. “DeAndre got into the preseason as the first homegrown, and took advantage of a veteran player getting an injury, and from that day on he never gave up his spot.
“More than anything, I would say he’s an opportunist, he’s been given an opportunity in a pretty competitive professional team, and he took advantage of it, and it’s now opened the doors for other players, because up until that point the Sounders really hadn’t gone down the whole homegrown route. DeAndre opened the door.”
Two more Sounders U-23 and Academy alumni have followed Yedlin this season, with Sean Okoli and Aaron Kovar both signing HGP contracts this past offseason. There may be more in the pipeline, too, as the Sounders continue to welcome not only former Academy players, but also some of the top college players that are spending the summer with the PDL side, to train with the club’s first team.
“Even kids that haven’t come out of our Academy system that are good players, we have players up here this summer from places like North Carolina and Elon and around the country; those players have had the opportunity to go up and train with the first team this summer,” Sawatzky said. “The whole idea is to develop players. The most exciting thing about the Sounders U-23 team is that we’ve had 16 players sign pro contracts out of that team in the last few years. We always want to win games, but our real job is to develop players for the next level, so we’re very proud of that.”
And at this point, no player brings more pride to the work Sawatzky and the Sounders organization have done than Yedlin.
“We take great pride in the fact that he was a Sounders Academy player, we take great pride that he was a kid from Washington state, and we take great pride that he was a part of the Sounders U-23s,” Sawatztky said. “He’s a true homegrown kid, and what he’s done on the world stage, it’s one of those things where a lot of coaches talk about ‘my player, my player’, but he’s not my player, and he’s not anybody else’s, we were just lucky enough to be part of his development, and now we sit back and enjoy the ride and watch him play.”