Local girls soccer players some of the best in the state

Published 10:57 pm Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Back when Dick Henderson coached at Cascade High School, he had a memorable encounter with a shell-shocked official.

It was 1989, the year Henderson made his debut as Cascade’s head girls soccer coach. The Bruins’ roster was loaded with talented players who had significant select-team experience. Their aggressive style in the season opener stunned one official.

“The referee was just having a fit because the girls were so physical,” Henderson recalled. “I said, ‘Have you ever reffed a (girls) select game? I mean, this is the standard of play. You better get used to that.’”

The point is that intense, top-notch girls soccer is nothing new in this area. But this fall, the number of elite high school teams and highly recruited players have reached a truly astonishing level.

Consider where local high school teams rank: Everett, Archbishop Murphy and King’s of Shoreline were each No. 1 in the state in their classification in last week’s CoachesAid.com girls soccer rankings. Seven local squads earned top-10 status — Jackson, Shorecrest, Glacier Peak and Cedarcrest were the others.

Everett is the defending Class 3A state champion. Class 4A Jackson, 2A Cedarcrest, 2A Archbishop Murphy, 1A King’s and 3A Shorecrest all placed in the top four at state last year.

Looking at individuals, nearly a dozen girls from the Class of 2010 have verbally committed to play in college, most for NCAA Division I programs. The group includes University of Washington recruits Annie Sittauer (Everett) and Lindsey Bos (Archbishop Murphy). Archbishop Murphy and Jackson each have three players who gave early commitments.

Clearly, this area produces excellent players and teams. But why? And how?

The key factors, local coaches said, are high-level year-round competition, excellent instruction and the area’s stellar reputation.

“The good players today are all getting on the best select (non-high school) teams they can,” Henderson said, “and the select coaches and the league they’re in and the level of competition is so high that I think we get a reputation … around the country that we have good talent here to recruit out of this area.”

Select-team opportunities are plentiful. More importantly, the quality of coaching in select programs has risen dramatically the past 10 years, Everett girls soccer coach Kosta Pitharoulis said. Combine that with the trend of players joining select clubs at younger ages — many at age 9 or 10 — and you get tons of well-trained, experienced players. And their skills transfer well to high school competition.

“It just works its way up the ladder, in a sense,” Pitharoulis said. “They may or may not be on the same select or recreational team, but they have a bond (in high school). If they like each other, they tend to play well together.”

That formula helped Everett roll to a state championship last year. The Seagulls had a record of 20-2-1 and outscored opponents 31-4 in seven postseason games, snaring the program’s first state title. Most of the team’s 10 seniors grew up playing together for Everett-based Evergreen Soccer Club.

This year the Seagulls’ varsity features players who represent five select programs: Evergreen, Snohomish United, Northwest Nationals of Edmonds, Crossfire Premier of Redmond and relatively new Tynecastle of Everett.

Everett High’s Sittauer and three Archbishop Murphy girls — Bos, Alexa Hughes and Caroline Brawner — played on the same Under-17 Crossfire team that won state and regional titles this past summer and advanced to the national championships in Lancaster, Mass.

Does select soccer — costly, time-consuming and the prime recruiting ground for college coaches — hurt the high school game? Not like it used to.

About two years ago Washington Youth Soccer, which oversees select competition, changed its schedule and made the fall a “dead period.” For girls, it eliminated an overlap of the select and high school seasons.

The result is fewer injuries and higher-quality play among high school teams, Jackson High girls soccer coach Mike Bartley said. High school soccer has become a priority again, he said, “where before it was trying to keep everybody healthy and select coaches were saying (to players), ‘Don’t train. Don’t do this with your high school.’

“Now I’m noticing a lot of girls are trying harder to get on good select teams because they want to play for the (high school) varsity. Before that, they wanted to play on the right select team because select was more important.”