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.
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.
