Kurt Schmid moving out of father’s shadow, promoted to S2 GM

Former Seattle Sounders Head Scout Kurt Schmid is now Director of Player Personnel. The son of former head coach Sigi Schmid isn’t just staying with Seattle, his job is expanding.

“Part of my new role, and new title, is going to be taking care of the soccer side of S2,” Kurt told Sounder at Heart. “I’ll be working closely with Ezra and the rest of the staff putting that group together.”

Part of that staff is new assistant coach John Hutchinson who played professionally in Australia for 19 years, playing more 400 games for Gippsland Falcons, Northern Spirit, Manly United and the Central Coast Mariners. Hutchinson also played 11 matches for the Malta National Team. He is replacing Junior Gonzalez who left for Rio Grande Valley FC, the Houston Dynamo USL team.

“We are very pleased to bring John into our technical staff," S2 Head Coach Ezra Hendrickson said via press release. "In addition to his robust professional career as player, his coaching philosophy and leadership qualities fit very well in our organization. I look forward to seeing how he develops our young players and helps them grow on and off the field."

S2 currently has three players under contract, including Academy product Lorenzo Ramos. Ramos, David Olsen and seven Academy players were all involved in parts of preseason with the first team. That does not necessarily mean that S2 will trend towards even more Academy products seeing time.

“If the talent is there we are going to sign them. It’s not any sort of preference of ‘oh, we’re going to sign an Academy kid to sign an Academy kid’ or are we going to avoid that,” Schmid said to Sounder at Heart. “I think we’re looking for good players, and ideally we’d like players to come from our Academy. If they do, we’ll sign them.”

The Academy added a Director of Coaching to aid Academy Director Marc Nicholls. Chris Little joins the Sounders Academy from Elon University where he was the head coach for three seasons. He was an assistant at Elon from 2001 through 2013.

There are numerous other promotions and title changes throughout the technical staff.

Chris Henderson: Vice President of Soccer and Sporting Director
Dave Tenney: High Performance Director
Chris Cornish: Director of Sports Medicine and Head Athletic Trainer
Nolan Myer: Director of Equipment Operations
Scott Tranilla: First Team Equipment Manager

The Sounders also added Jake Bronowski to fill out the training staff as a Massage Therapist. He was previously with the Chicago Fire for seven seasons.