Monthly Archives: November 2025

NW Collegiate Soccer, Washington Huskies

Undercovered Husky Heritage

As the story goes, they spent at least one night before a big game sleeping in a barn. School colors were sometimes absent from their bargain basement jerseys. Occasionally, their coach might miss a match because he was making decent money parking cars at a classy Seattle restaurant.

Yet no one took the Washington Huskies lightly. These Huskies bonded tightly together, relishing their results achieved against formidable, better funded opponents. In fact, they once marched unscathed through an entire season to win a conference championship and later snapped the longest unbeaten streak in collegiate state history. They did so while not costing UW athletics a single dime.

The 15 years preceding the advent of varsity women’s soccer at Washington were full of lofty accomplishments and colorful characters in that self-funded club. The shame is that U-Dub leaders never saw fit to support them and, more than three decades later, their feats have gone unrecognized and have been largely forgotten.

Washington’s 1984 women’s club finished second to Western Washington’s varsity and ahead of three other varsity programs in the Northwest Collegiate Soccer Conference. (Jerome Rauen)

Family members around the world scour libraries and online archives to uncover their bloodlines and cultural heritage to better understand themselves. They develop a deeper sense of self, belonging and what has effectively sculpted their existence. They come to know, at least partly, why they are who they are.

While the official UW soccer record book starts with the first varsity team in 1991, here are stories of their forerunners, the club. They loved the game, and they enjoyed one another and playing for their school. Together, they were the outright first women of Washington Huskies soccer.

Absolute First All-American

Missing from that record book is the name of a future United States international. More than that, Denise Bender was the first player from any college in the state, male or female, to be voted All-America. Bender, who grew up on Mercer Island, started her studies and played for the pre-varsity club at Washington State. Along with her identical twin sister Laurie, who was a member of Western Washington’s varsity, they were voted all-Northwest Collegiate Soccer Conference defenders as freshmen and sophomores. Wazzu and Western shared the NCSC title in 1978.

Denise Bender became the first collegiate All-American from a Washington school following her first season with the UW club. (Courtesy Denise Bender)
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Know Your History, NW Collegiate Soccer, Washington Huskies

The Road Not Taken

So much of life is like that Robert Frost poem, of two roads diverging. We muse about what might’ve happened by taking an alternate path; what would have “made all the difference.”

In our local soccer sphere, one particular path not taken was on Montlake. Where the world’s game was initially embraced by one University of Washington athletics administration, it was ignored by the next. Because of that neglect – or outright opposition – some observers contend Husky soccer has never achieved the heights for a school from a region so rich in natural resources.

If ever there was a golden era of girls and women in Washington state amateur soccer, it was the Eighties. Puget Sound was prolifically producing exceptional players who would go on to earn national and international recognition. Yet almost all would do so without ever matriculating through the university which might have offered the biggest mutual benefit for both player and school.

What might have been a UW all-decade selection for the 1980s. Just a sample, which includes future USWNT players, All-Americans and two Hermann Award winners.

Whereas some athletic directors across America saw the future, others clung to the past or their personal favorite. At Chapel Hill, the North Carolina athletic director, Bill Cobey, chose to start a varsity women’s soccer program in 1979. Cobey believed that by getting out in front of the sport, UNC could become a juggernaut. He hired one coach to cover both men and women. That coach, Anson Dorrance, made history and the Tar Heels’ legacy is unrivaled.

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NW Collegiate Soccer, Washington Huskies

Washington’s Non-Varsity Blues

It was an invitation Mike Ryan could not refuse.

Wrapping up a training session in the fall of 1973, the University of Washington men’s coach was approached by a UW student, a young woman. She wanted to play soccer, and she wanted someone to coach a team of fellow Husky coeds.

Ryan was already coaching the Huskies plus youth and adult teams. He was a Dublin-born father of four and foundry worker who seemed to spend the rest of his waking hours growing the world’s game in his adopted homeland. Since arriving in Seattle in 1960, he had served as president of the Washington state men’s association and youth association. However, that addressed only half of the population.

Mike Ryan closely watching his Washington women in the late 70s. (Debbie Barlow)

Ryan agreed to serve as coach and his Irish brogue greeted Washington’s first female footballers. Few of them had any competitive athletic experience, let alone kicked a ball. He started them with the three-man weave drill, then another called Hit and Run. That first year the Huskies would play a jumbled schedule with such opponents as the Eastside Shamrocks, Green River Community College, Highline CC and the Capitol Hill Strikers.

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