Legendary prep soccer coach Mike Bartley dies at 63

Few people have left the kind of wide-reaching impact across a community that soccer coach Mike Bartley has left in Snohomish County.

Bartley, a Cascade High School and Everett Community College alumnus, started his high school coaching career in 1986 at Eastside Catholic in Sammamish. He had been a player both with Cascade and EvCC and brought that expertise to the coaching arena.

Bartley returned to Snohomish County when he took up soccer coaching duties with Jackson, Meadowdale and Archbishop Murphy. He won four state titles between the boys and girls teams at Archbishop Murphy, most recently in 2021, etching his name in Washington high school soccer history.

Bartley passed away on June 3 after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 63 years old.

Bartley’s passion for soccer started young, as his older brother, Paul Bartley, remembered it. With the Sounders being established in 1974, there was excitement around the world’s most popular sport in the area. Mike attended the new franchise’s games here and there and regularly checked in with the European soccer giants by watching weekly programs like Soccer Made in Germany to keep up with the cutting-edge tactics of the renowned Bundesliga.

“We just became soccer junkies,” Paul said of that pre-high-school time for Mike.

After playing for and graduating from Cascade, where Paul had a hand in coaching him alongside legendary area coach Pat Sullivan, Mike attended Everett Community College and continued playing a defensive role. It was at EvCC where Mike got his first crack at coaching, heading up a women’s club team that would evolve into an official sport at the institution down the line.

With work at Boeing pulling him down to Renton, Mike landed the girls soccer head coaching job at Eastside Catholic after college, holding that position until 1993 and earning a state appearance in 1990. Mike also coached the Issaquah boys soccer team from 1992 to 1994. With his day job taking up most of his time before noon, Mike didn’t teach during his coaching career, but emphasized education to his players.

Mike moved up to Boeing’s Everett location soon after that time, starting as the Jackson boys soccer coach in the spring of 1995. With Jackson High School opening in 1994, Mike continued a trend from EvCC of starting programs by becoming the team’s first-ever head coach. Meanwhile, Mike became the coach girls soccer at Meadowdale in the fall starting in 1997, as his affinity for coaching year-round was clear.

Bartley’s Timberwolves made state once in 11 seasons while his Meadowdale squads went to state in five out of six tries. In 2003 Mike moved on to take on the role of girls soccer coach at Jackson, where midfielder Jessie Lidstrom first met him.

Lidstrom moved from striker to holding midfielder at the request of Bartley, who had a keen eye for optimizing his personnel. She eventually played collegiate soccer at that new position, which suited her far better than she first thought.

“He did a really good job at highlighting our strengths. … He knew what we were good at and he tried to push us in new directions,” Lidstrom said. “His thing was always to try to get us to the next level to get to college.”

Part of Bartley’s method was to keep scrupulous statistics on his players, creating a leaderboard that compiled metrics like shots on goal to encourage friendly competition. Mike brought this to every team he coached, reciting statistics that he had team managers or reserve players take note of during games at team banquets or in meetings with players.

But for as organized as Mike was as a coach, he emphasized levity. He’d always bring gummy bears and chocolate milk for his Jackson players after games, threw pizza parties for various statistical achievements, and even bought Timberwolves-themed beanies for his players to wear on the sideline.

The latter became a running gag.

“We wore them because, like, ‘we’ll give you this one, but these are horrible,’” Lidstrom joked.

Through his 18 years at Jackson, Mike’s teams made eight state appearances between the boys and girls squads. Mike reconnected with Paul, who coached the junior varsity girls squad for the Timberwolves in the late 2000s.

Paul moved on to coaching soccer at Marysville Pilchuck in 2011, where he still coaches today, which would set up a league rivalry for the Bartleys.

Mike took up head coaching duties for the boys and girls teams at Archbishop Murphy soccer in 2012. The boys program had qualified for state six times in the previous 10 seasons, while the girls program had finished in the top three at state for 11 straight seasons.

With the boys squad, Mike turned a solid program into a state dynasty. The boys three-peated at State from 2015 to 2017, while the girls squad finished third at State in 2016 after a few down years.

Alongside Mike Bartley was assistant coach and friend Mike Boswell, whose son had played with Bartley’s son on youth teams.

The duo coached together for 11 seasons at Archbishop Murphy, and Boswell always admired the dedication that Mike brought to the job. Mike would often scout other teams at their games, sometimes leaving the final moments of practice to Boswell. He’d even return home close to midnight after a long day of coaching a game and scouting another, just to wake up at 3:30 am for work at Boeing.

Mike also brought his same passion for stat-keeping to the Wildcats.

“Our banquet is three hours long, because he’d go over every kid’s stat,” Boswell said. “It was insane — the stats he kept — and I think he did it more for the players than for himself.”

2017 Washington Gatorade Player of the Year Matt Williams scored 37 goals in that final 2017 state title run under Bartley. Williams was just one part of a roster that had played together since youth play and had “11 players that were high-quality players from top to bottom,” according to assistant coach Jon Echols.

But for Williams, Mike brought it all together. Williams never felt unprepared for a game, since Mike had a matchup-specific game plan for practically every outing, regardless of the opponent’s skill level. Mike also moved Williams from his youth position of center back to forward, seeing potential in Williams’ scoring ability. That move, along with a few other major positional changes, helped the Wildcats reach their full potential.

“I’ve never had someone believe in me as much as Mike did,” Williams said. “Without Mike, I don’t know if I’d be where I am today. I know I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

For many players, high school athletics are about as far as their organized sporting careers will go. Mike made sure to make every moment of those fleeting four years special for his kids. Up 5-0 at halftime of their third consecutive state title win, Williams remembered embracing Mike as the joy of what they had accomplished set in.

“Mike just had a way of making moments feel special. Whether it was a Tuesday conference game or it was our third state championship, he prepared us in a way that made it feel like the World Cup final,” Williams said. “(Archbishop Murphy soccer) will always be the house that Mike Bartley built.”

Mike also brought back alumni games, pitting former players against current varsity squads in friendly matches. Although it was for fun, Mike’s son Josh, who coached alongside him after playing for him at Archbishop Murphy, believes bringing back former players helped set the stage for the generational culture that Archbishop Murphy soccer has today.

The girls squad at Archbishop Murphy routinely went on preseason trips to build camaraderie and that paid off on the pitch.

The 2021 team, led by Herald Player of the Year Jordyn Latta, finally broke through, capturing an elusive state title. Latta came into the program during her sophomore season and was immediately impressed with the sheer amount of time her new skipper was putting in. Mike, as he had done so many times in the past, moved Latta to the midfield, where she would thrive.

Although that 2021 squad had a goal differential of 125-7 and didn’t lose a game, Mike’s presence was instrumental in making it all work.

“In many of our closer games … most coaches would be freaking out or losing their cool but Bartley was so even-keeled. And he just said, ‘you guys got this,’” Latta said. “He never, in my experience, raised his voice to a point that he seemed angry; he was so calm and collected.”

When it came time to play Marysville Pilchuck in matches deemed the “Battle of the Bartleys,” Mike got the best of Paul on the girls side 14 out of 16 times, while the boys games were much closer. For a pair of siblings as close as Mike and Paul though, those matchups required a bit of distance.

“We had a rule. It was the only time we didn’t call each other and talk about the game until the next day,” Paul said. “You would have to buy dinner for the winner, we’d go back and forth about that.”

Bartley, who had retired from Boeing at the beginning of 2025, stepped away from coaching both Wildcats teams in 2024 around the time of his cancer diagnosis. He worried about the people around him watching him go through a battle doctors gave him two to six years to fight.

“Mike was so supportive and so determined to keep doing what he loved,” Josh said. “He was a very humble man, but he did care about what people thought about him. All of us around him were like, ‘Dude, you’re fighting cancer and almost a hero at this point for these people.’”

Mike, indeed, kept on doing what he loved. He joined Paul’s Marysville Pilchuck staff and helped coach the boys soccer team during this past 2025 season while going to chemotherapy treatments every other Monday. He enjoyed being able to leave the “big picture” tasks to his brother and focus on the details of each player’s game.

With his condition seemingly improving, Mike went on a family vacation to Hawai’i and took up the girls soccer coaching job at Kamiak for this upcoming fall — a program he had wanted to build up for quite some time.

Unfortunately, complications related to the cancer never allowed Mike to fulfill that vision, and he passed away on June 3 with family by his side.

Jessie Lidstrom, who played for those upstart Jackson girls soccer teams, is now an athletic coordinator at Kamiak. She was pleased to see her old coach still held onto his charming habits when he interviewed for the open coaching job in May.

“(The Kamiak players) looked so excited to play for him,” Lidstrom said. “They could just tell that he truly coached for the girls and didn’t coach for his own ego.”

Josh was set to join his dad at Kamiak in the fall.

“He loved proving and establishing himself as an elite coach who can win, who can turn a program around,” Josh said. “(He was) excited for a new challenge and embracing something like that together… this would’ve been the first step of us building something together.”

While Mike had hobbies like golfing, his life truly revolved around soccer. The joy he got from learning about the game, crafting his patented aggressive defenses and coaching his teams was never hard to see in his game plans and how he worked to make each moment special.

“He just cared so much,” Josh said. “I don’t know how many kids have come up to me … over the course of Mike’s life being like, ‘your dad was such a father figure to me, he meant so much to me.’”

Paul boiled his brother’s years of dedication and hard work for his players down to one thing.

“He was just a nice guy.”

There will be a celebration of life for Mike Bartley at Archbishop Murphy High School on June 21 at 1 p.m.