Last season, Seattle Sounders Academy players seemed scattered around the country, with only a handful local. This year, there are many more in the Greater Puget Sound, with three each committed to the University of Washington (Coach Jamie Clark), Seattle University (Coach Pete Fewing) and Western Washington (Coach Travis Connell). Talking to Academy Technical Director and Sounders U-23 Coach Darren Sawatzky, that could shift, as a few players are still undecided.

There's probably about four more guys that, within the next two weeks, will announce and add them to the list. A couple of them will go out of state, as well. It seemed a little scattered last year, but in reality, once that entire senior class chooses the schools they want to attend, we'll have a pretty good scattering again this year.

At this point there are 14 commits; here they are ordered alphabetically by school:

Bucknell: Jesse Klug

Denver: Jordan Schweitzer

San Diego State: Keenan Townsend

Seattle University: Joe Mancini, Justin Solomon, Austin Sweeney

Stanford: Aaron Kovar

University of Washington: Dom Dismuke, Michael Gallagher, Ian Lange

West Virginia: Nick Raskasky

Western Washington: Austin Curtis, Kurtis Pederson, Sawyer Preston

For those interested in tracking Academy Alumni, it will be much easier this season, and not just because of the new Sounders U-23s.

Below the fold you will find the UW Women's Soccer Commits and when their Men's side is finished (they are also waiting on a few players) that will be added.

Continue reading this post »

When the NCAA Men's D1 bracket was announced there was a somewhat surprising team left out of the tournament. Despite a 12-4-2 record, winning 7 of their last 8 and being 18th in the Coaches Poll the University of Washington Huskies season did not continue. First year head coach Jamie Clark did see six Huskies make all-PAC12 honors. Three on the first team, two on second team and one with an honorable mention.

In a phone interview Friday Coach Clark (no relation) said;

The only sad part was that for our Seniors their final loss was to a bunch of guys in a board room. No one wants to end that way. You want to lose on the field and go down swinging, play and get beaten by someone. Instead a few coaches and a lot of administrators came to a decision that left us out of the tournament.

The fourth year head coach didn't think it was a downturn in talent in the PAC12, or that it is more difficult for a West Coast program, noting that the conference has a strong history of developing MLS and better quality players. While the success of UCLA has a lot to do with that each program has MLS talent. Looking at the Seattle Sounders roster and one finds several PAC12 connections from the coaching staff (Sigi Schmid, Kurt Schmid and Chris Henderson all with UCLA) to players like Tyson Wahl and Servando Carrasco at Cal, Taylor Graham and Roger Levesque at Stanford, and David Estrada and Patrick Ianni at UCLA.

Coach Clark and the team aren't waiting until the spring exhibition season to start focusing on 2012's title hopes. He adjusted his initial training plan because of the drive of his returning players to get event better.

Continue reading this post »

Some more involved coverage of both the Huskies men's and women's soccer teams is on the to-do list here at the Heart, but in the meantime I thought it was worth highlighting the fact that the men's team has entered the NSCAA national rankings at #23 after starting the season 2-0-1. The last time the Huskies were ranked was a brief period in October last season when the Huskies were also ranked #23rd after a big win over Portland. Before that, the team hadn't been ranked since 2007.

It's a bright start for new coach Jamie Clark, who took over in the offseason for local fixture Dean Wurzberger, a former (NASL) Seattle Sounder who coached the Huskies for 19 years. Clark has his own Sounders connections, having played with Taylor Graham and Roger Levesque in college and having coached Mike Fucito at Harvard for a season. He's also the son of Scottish national team keeper Bobby Clark, who's the coach at Notre Dame and who played under Sir Alex Ferguson during his miracle years at Aberdeen, so he's certainly part of a proud coaching legacy. Dave interviewed the new coach in February and went into some of those connections.

The Huskies' new ranking may be a bit generous given the lack of top notch competition thus far, but credit the team for taking care of business. In a down year for the Pac-12 (which is actually the Pac-6 in soccer), the team doesn't face another (currently) nationally ranked team all season other than 22nd ranked California. Otherwise, the toughest stretch of the season might be a two-game away trip to Dallas next week versus Tulsa and SMU, who's getting a few Top 25 votes. If they get out of that stretch in good shape, they may be able to hold onto a position in the rankings for the rest of the season and earn an NCAA Tournament berth, an opportunity they were denied last year despite a deserving resume.

Villyan Bijev was a forward who put up good numbers with Cal Odyssey of the USSDA and was one of the first two to sign Letter's of Intent with the University of Washington and Coach Jamie Clark. The young American with a Bulgarian passport will now be skipping his college commitments to instead come-up through the Liverpool system. He signed a 3 year deal with 2 year option to play for the Reds. For all the grief that the the US Development system gets, this is a player who took a strong performance as a forward for Cal Odyssey and signed with one of the better teams in the world.

In the second meeting between Odyssey and the Sounders U-18 teams Odyssey won and Bijevy scored one of their three goals. He did not play in the Academy Playoffs and his season stats are no longer at the USSDA website for Cal Odyssey.

On a busy soccer Saturday (Champions League Final, Mexico v Ecuador at Qwest, Sounders v Real Salt Lake) the University of Washington released its soccer schedule for the coming fall. It is a schedule that should help their RPI come tournament selection time with Dawgs playing 2010's #4 (Cal), #6 (SMU), #8 (UCLA), #21 (Tulsa) and #34 (Florida Gulf Coast) all ranked higher than they were.

Coach Jamie Clark sees this as a schedule to prepare his team for something beyond the regular season (linked above)

"Playing in the Pac 12 guarantees us one of the toughest schedules in the country each year," said new head coach Jamie Clark. "Our team wants to measure itself versus the best and we are fortunate that our conference does just that."

The PAC12  lacks a full slate of teams, in fact only 5 actual members have men's soccer teams, so the Huskies are adding to their schedule with local sides Gonzaga, Seattle U and Portland. This doesn't just reduce their costs, but also helps them recruit locals with only Oregon State operating a PAC12 team. While the MLS Academy system continues to grow most of those players will go onto college rather than directly to MLS, and this should raise the quality of play at the college level. With lower costs and bigger budgets due to the new PAC12 TV deal more schools should explore adding teams, not for the greater good of the sport, but because there is a greater chance they produce professionals in this sport than any other non-revenue sport.

Full Schedule

The University of Washtington just hired a new Head Coach. It is a coach with connections to the Seattle Sounders, and one that seems to want those connections to be as strong as they possibly can be. As in the other football, he clearly sees his number one goal to put up a fence around the state and keep every great player at here, while picking up good players from around the country, as well. His goal is simple: just be one of the greatest college soccer programs in the country.

Coach Jamie Clark (no relation) and I talked about why he took the position here after a year at Creighton and a few years at Harvard, the potentials for relationships with the Sounders and the passion for soccer at all levels in the greater Puget Sound. It should be noted that the University of Washington is one of many schools that I have attended.

Continue reading this post »

Sure, Coach Sark and Coach Wulff will get most of the attention on "signing day" but let's give a little love to the Husky soccer team. The other football had two NLIs come in and one of the players you likely have seen play already, as he's on the Sounders U-18 team.

Drew White, usually at centerback, will be coached by Jamie Clark (no relation). Clark was recently coached at  Creighton, prior to that at Harvard. He has developed recent MLS reserve talents like Mike Fucito (no I don't think he's only a reserve) and Andre Akpan (I don't really think his future is as a reserve either) and also played with Taylor Graham. White is 6'0" and 177, choosing to stay with a school that he already had committed to attend. As a centerback he has 3 goals in Academy play on the season.

Villyan Bijev is the other player who sent in letters today. Diehard fans of the USSDA Academy system may know him from Cal Odyssey (Central Cali non-MLS Academy team). The 6'1", 150-pound forward has 7 goals (50% of team output) in 9 played, all starts. Odyssey is 3rd in the same Academy division as Sounders FC Academy. Bijev is out of Fresno, California.

For the Sounders it can't help but be good that they will be able to easily keep track of a player for whom they hold first rights. Especially knowing that he's coached by someone who knows the League both through developing talent and having played alongside it.