UW women's soccer kickin' it at home

SEATTLE -- As most of us know, the Puget Sound area is a genuine soccer hotbed. Everywhere, it seems, kids are kicking soccer balls.

And for some, it's a love they never outgrow.

Year after year, some of the region's top players go on to play college soccer. A few go out of state, but many end up at the University of Washington, where this season a core of talented homegrown athletes has the UW women off to one of their best starts in the program's history.

The Huskies are 9-2 through the non-conference portion of their schedule, and they came within a whisker of being 10-1 before losing to perennial national power Portland 1-0 in overtime on Friday night.

Only twice since the program began in 1991 have the Huskies been better through 11 games. Washington opened 10-1 in 2000 and went on to a Pacific-10 Conference championship. And in 2004 the Huskies began 9-1-1 and eventually reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament.

Of the 29 players on this year's roster, 15 are from Washington. Of those, 14 are from the Puget Sound area and four are from Snohomish County, including junior starters Chelsea Bumbaugh, a midfielder from Monroe, and Alex Kirk, a forward from Edmonds.

"It's been my goal to make sure we keep the (good) players home," said UW head coach Lesle Gallimore, who is in her 15th season at Washington. "That's not always going to happen, but you're going to try. And you can build a (contending) team around kids from here.

"Like any other state outside of California and maybe Texas where there are huge talent pools, the soccer talent here has its little highs and lows. In any given year there's more talent than others. But for the most part there's a few good players to be found, and then in some years there's a ton of great players to be found."

Two of the UW's top players in the last decade were Washington products. Goalkeeper Hope Solo from Richland played for the Huskies from 1999-2002 and went on to represent the United States at the 2007 World Cup and the recent 2008 Olympics. Tina (Frimpong) Ellertson of Vancouver, a Husky from 2001-04, was on the '07 U.S. World Cup team.

The quality of youth soccer programs in Washington is historically strong, Gallimore said, and it's becoming "more so as time's gone on. The level of the youth coaches here has risen as far as their talent and their ability to develop players.

"There's a lot of great coaching going on now, and they're paid well," she said. "Kids have paid a price to play select soccer in this state, so they should have high expectations of what they're getting from their coaches. And the good news is that (the Huskies) are benefiting from that."

Bumbaugh and Kirk came up through those same youth programs. In fact, the two were teammates on a state team that won an Olympic Development Program national championship in 2004, along with later UW teammates Nikki Murray (Des Moines), Kendyl Pele (Kennewick) and Hannah Greig (Woodinville).

Bumbaugh, Gallimore said, "is the type of player any coach wants on her team. She's just pedal to the metal, and nothing, nothing phases her. She could have the bubonic plague for a week and survive it, and then come out and beat everybody else in fitness. Mentally and physically, she is the toughest player I've ever coached, hands down."

Conversely, Gallimore chuckled, Kirk "is probably the most mellow person I've ever coached. There's often times we want to put a heart monitor on her just to make sure she has a pulse. But athletically she's very, very gifted, and a great team player."

Kirk, who played one year at Seattle Pacific University before transferring to Washington, "is really growing into a great role here and she's a big contributor on our team," Gallimore said.

As well as the Huskies have started this season, the coming Pac-10 schedule will be challenging. Three conference teams -- UCLA, USC and Stanford -- are ranked in the top six nationally, and Washington will face two of them this weekend. The Huskies, who are ranked 18th on one national poll and unranked on another, will visit Los Angeles to face USC on Friday and UCLA on Sunday.

"We definitely have one of the toughest conferences in the nation," said Bumbaugh, a 2006 graduate of Monroe High School. "But I think this team is good enough to beat any of the teams in the Pac-10. It's going to be fun and I'm excited."

"The ones everyone worries about are the California teams," said Kirk, a 2006 graduate from Edmonds-Woodway High School. "They'll be tough, and I think they'll be exciting games and hard games."

Down the road, she went on, "everyone wants to be in the national final. But we don't look that far ahead. We just say that the best team is the next team we're playing and the next game is the most important game."

The season's goal, Gallimore said, "is to be as competitive as we possibly can and to help develop these young women into better people than they already are, which is hard to do because they're all pretty great now.

"We also want to win and be competitive," she added. "Because when we don't win, my expectations are not met. We expect to win every game we play."