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QuickTake:
Lookout sat down with Darren Sawatzky, who will lead Eugene’s brand new men's pro soccer club, to talk about USL League One (“a haven for the American player”), his return home to the Northwest, and his first order of business: signing some players.
Sporting Cascades FC is slowly but surely coming together.
Two weeks ago, Eugene’s newest men’s professional soccer club, which plans to begin play in USL League One next year, announced the hiring of its first manager, Darren Sawatzky.
Sawatzky, 53, had been head coach of USL League One’s Richmond Kickers since 2019 and arrives in Oregon with plenty of Northwest ties.
He is from Seattle, played at the University of Portland and later in the MLS for the Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders. And he was an assistant coach at Central Catholic High School in Portland in 2001.
Lookout Eugene-Springfield caught up with Sawatzky last week for a conversation at 5th Street Public Market about his journey back to Oregon, what makes USL League One different from MLS and whether fans can expect a winner at Civic Park anytime soon.
(This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
Lookout Eugene-Springfield: How did you end up in Eugene?
Darren Sawatzky: For one, I played at the University of Portland. I played for the Portland Timbers. I’m obviously a Seattle guy. My wife’s mom is about four hours south of us. My dad’s in Seattle. I have grandkids in California and Seattle and friends up and down the whole I-5 corridor in Oregon. So it’s a good homecoming for me.
And then there’s the other side, where John and Dave Galas are good friends, and we wanted to make sure that John’s legacy is carried on.
You’ve been successful in this sport and in this league. I can’t imagine you’d leave for another situation unless you believed it could be competitive.
I loved Richmond. It’s a great city and the owner is a good friend of mine. It was just time. Sometimes seven years as a professional coach in one spot can be a long tenure. It was great. I really enjoyed it. But it was just time for a new project, and this was an opportunity to be close to home and work with people who are like-minded.
The Galas brothers are always about culture and making sure it’s community-based, which is 100% what I’m about. Then you have Bill Cornog, who’s the new owner and an absolute spitfire who wants us to execute and be efficient. He also wants us to win. Those are all things I’m into.
I’ve covered MLS for the last three years but haven’t been around a USL League One franchise. What are some of the differences — other than talent level — from your perspective?
I was involved in MLS for 20 years. I played in it, coached in it and ran an academy in it. The one thing I’ll tell you about League One is that it’s really a haven for the American player.
One of the things about MLS now is that it’s more difficult to be an American player and make it because of the domestic player rule. If you have a green card, you’re considered domestic. So if you look at the Portland Timbers roster, there are a lot of players on that team who weren’t born in the United States.
Does that make it wrong? I don’t know. But if you’re an American kid who grows up playing youth soccer in America and college soccer in America, it is exponentially more difficult to make it in MLS than when I played in the league.
We can give those players a platform to showcase themselves and move their way up.
When I was in Seattle and working in the academy for seven years, we transferred DeAndre Yedlin to Tottenham and Jordan Morris made the national team. We just did that again in Richmond. We had a kid named Griffin Garnett who we transferred to Ferencvárosi in Hungary for a huge transfer fee — the biggest one in League One.
Wouldn’t it be cool if there’s a kid from Springfield or Eugene who makes Cascades and then goes to MLS, or even past it and right to Europe? We’ve proven that can be done, and that’s certainly something we’re going to try to do.
What’s the key when building a roster from scratch?
In order to be successful in League One, you have to have people around who have been involved. It’s a really arduous national schedule, and you have to be durable. You have to understand that you’re going to play in a different type of venue every week: small fields, big fields, turf fields, wet fields, everything.
You have to have an understanding of that, so you need some guys who have experience. You’re going to need some guys who have played in League One.
You’re also going to bring in international players. They have to be the right international players, and we have a relationship with a company called Blue Crow that Bill is involved with that’s going to help with that. I’m excited because it should give us an advantage in finding international players to add to the local and college kids.
As I said before, you have to find the right Americans for the opportunity, and I’ve been around the league for a while, so hopefully I can find some of them.
As someone who is familiar with the passion for soccer in Portland and Seattle, how do you tap into that here in Eugene?
I’ll tell you this, man: When I was in Seattle and Portland and Vancouver came into MLS, I think that, in a way, saved the league. As soon as you had that rivalry, it gave a true hatred rivalry to a league that really needed it at the time.
There’s no reason why we can’t do that with Spokane and Boise and create that for the future.
How did you pick up the game when you were a kid?
I grew up in Federal Way, south of Seattle. It’s a harder place, and I had a single dad for most of my childhood. I’d run around — a latchkey kid — with my neighbors, playing soccer at literally 5 or 6 years old. My neighbor’s dad was a coach. I jumped on a team and started swinging, and have been ever since.
Have you moved here yet?
We landed yesterday and went around and looked at four or five places. We’ll look at another this afternoon.
We still have to sell a house in Richmond and all that stuff. So when we go back, we’ll be there until we sell. I’ll work remotely, go back and forth, and then we’ll get out here as soon as we can.
Eight months before kickoff, what does the work look like?
We have a roster to build. When you’re building something from scratch, I obviously have a responsibility to help build a brand and help people in the community understand the club.
But the most important thing over the next three or four months is to put the foundation of a roster together. We still have some things to do with the league, but that’s my main priority.
Do you think this team can win?
I think any team in League One can win out of the gate if you build it correctly. Culturally, it takes a little bit of time, and obviously we need support financially from the community. We need attendance and people who want to be a part of it.
But I absolutely think we can win.
