Redmond, Washington is commonly known as the home of Microsoft. Located 16 miles east of Seattle, it is little more than a stone’s throw from the Emerald City and the home of the Sounders, one of MLS’ marquee clubs. However, for those who follow soccer closely at the youth as well as the Development Academy and Elite Clubs National League levels, Redmond is home to another successful organization entirely.

Christian Soto-Rincon in action for Crossfire during U.S. Soccer Development Academy play at Redmond High School.

Crossfire Premier Soccer Club’s mission is to “promote the game of soccer by providing the highest possible level of technical and tactical training, skill development and competitive team play, and to provide highly skilled and capable players with an opportunity to further excel in the sport,” according to its website.

The club, which fields boys’ and girls’ teams from U-7 all the way up to U-19, and which previously competed in the Premier Development League, announced in December that it would field an expansion team in the National Premier Soccer League. Crossfire Redmond will compete in the Northwest Conference division with Spokane Shadow, FCM Portland, OSA FC and PDX FC.

“We are excited about a new level of competition and excited to put our young guys in that environment,” said Troy Letherman, Crossfire’s director of player development. “We expect to be successful, but we also expect to incur some knocks along the way. We are putting together a team with the idea of competing regionally and nationally.”

The NPSL has 100 teams with virtually 100 different stories about how to successfully bring a new club into the fold. With the foundation of success Crossfire has cemented with its younger teams, adding a club for NPSL play seems like the logical next move.

“Our U-19s reached the Academy quarterfinals last year. We are competing with MLS, and in some cases, doing better,” Letherman said. “We previously had a PDL club, but were not ready at that time. This is an important extension to our development. We have had National team-caliber players with three years on a U-19 team, and that is not good for them.”

Crossfire will hold tryouts in April, but Letherman is confident that the bulk of the club will be comprised of existing Crossfire players. That is due to the club’s sustained success at all levels, and the national and international recognition that success has produced.

“Our development program is one of the strongest in the country and our top youth teams compete against the biggest clubs in the world annually,” Letherman said. “We have had more than 30 individual call-ups to the U.S. Youth National teams in the past two years alone, and at the latest Gold Cup, we had three players with Crossfire ties on the U.S. Men’s National team for the tournament: Cristian Roldan, Kelyn Rowe and DeAndre Yedlin.”

Yedlin, a long-time Crossfire product, currently executes his wares in Newcastle’s backline. After more than 200 appearances with the New England Revolution, Rowe is now with Sporting KC. And Roldan has solidified his midfield position with the Sounders the past three seasons. Two more Crossfire alums, Nathan Aune and Hassani Dotson, were recently selected in the MLS Superdraft.

Crossfire exposes its players to international competition at a young age. Every team from U-10 up makes at least one international trip per year as part of the club’s overall development program.

Crossfire U-14 in action versus Paris Saint-Germain in Madrid.

“In the past three years, our players have competed versus Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester United, Manchester City, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Bayern Munich, Ajax, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and more – and may of them at multiple ages, multiple times,” Letherman said. “The players who have come through our program have been tested against the very best competition in the world, and this is an integral part of our plan for developing high-level players.”

Additionally, Crossfire is an official partner of AS Roma, and has several talent cooperation agreements with first-division professional clubs in Belgium, Germany, Holland and Norway. Letherman said that Crossfire sends up to a dozen young players for training and/or professional trials in Europe each season. Two current U-18/19 players who will factor on the NPSL team – Wesley Frankel and Christian Soto-Rincon – were on trial with Norway’s Stabaek this past October.

“Our setup is certainly an advantage,” Letherman said. “We have developed an infrastructure, but it is more important than that. We have long-term strategic planning and developmental planning in place. We have specific goals in mind, and we have specific metrics to define success, and those are not necessarily wins and losses.”

Expect Crossfire to be competitive from the get-go. Spokane won the Northwest Conference division last year and went undefeated (seven wins, five draws) during the regular season. FCM Portland made a run all the way to the national semifinals in the postseason. This is a healthy addition to an already competitive group.

“New rivalries will develop and we are excited that they are good sides,” Letherman said. “That kind of competition melds with our player development.”

NPSL Managing Director Cindy Spera echoed the excitement others in the region have over Crossfire’s addition to the league.

“The Pacific Northwest is an incredibly important market in American soccer,” Spera said in a statement announcing Crossfire’s addition to the league in December. “We are very excited to grow our Northwest Conference with an accomplished organization like Crossfire Redmond. They have an incredible history in player development and we are looking forward to what they will bring to the NPSL.”

Crossfire Academy training at Redmond High School.

Letherman said things are moving smoothly for the club ahead of its expected May opener (the Northwest Conference schedule is not out at this time) and he expects things to get rolling by mid-March. The team is slated to play its home games at Redmond High School, but may split with Interbay Stadium, the soccer-specific home of Seattle Pacific University. The roster has a few questions that should be answered by the middle of next month as well.

“We will know by mid-March about the guys who are trying out in Europe,” Letherman said. “We will have tryouts in April, but the bulk of the team will come from Crossfire kids and possibly a couple of college kids playing with our Crossfire kids.”

Unlike many new NPSL clubs, Crossfire has its player pool, supporters and finances questions answered at this time. Letherman noted that Crossfire has around 40-45 kids currently playing NCAA soccer to go with the older Academy players that will form the NPSL club.

“The NPSL team will be a small piece of who we are as a club,” Letherman said.

Crossfire plans to market the NPSL team to its current membership, which consists of some 2,500 families. Younger players will serve as ball boys for the team.

“We want to create that club feel; we will even have the same uniform that the U-9 players do,” Letherman said. “This is about us utilizing our player pool for this. For the young guys, they can look at this team as a place they can eventually play.”

Financially, there is no pressure for the club to make money or draw thousands of fans, but a talented, competitive club in a hotbed soccer region with successful older clubs gearing up to knock them off is the perfect recipe for a Saturday out with the family.

“Right now, we are focused on locking down administration and logistics and connecting with the player pool,” Letherman said. “These players know how we work and where we train. We can hit the ground running, especially once the season starts.”

Letherman is a big fan of the condensed schedule.

“We will be playing every week, and that is a good thing,” Letherman said. “The Academy schedule features 28 games spread over 10 months. That means there are big gaps. It is much easier to get the players on a consistent schedule like this. It is better for development and fitness.”

As some players may still be away at college when the regular season begins, Letherman anticipates utilizing older Crossfire alums, guys in their mid-20s.

Declan McGlynn, current Seattle University and U.S. Under-19 MNT player, in action for Crossfire during U.S. Soccer Development Academy play.

On the administrative side, Crossfire has numerous talented and experienced coaches throughout its club, including Seattle Pacific University men’s coach Mark Collings and Jim Rilatt, who led the Portland Timbers U23s to the PDL championship in 2010. A decision on who will be the club’s NPSL coach will be made shortly. Bernie James, a Coventry, England native who played professionally for 24 years with clubs such as the Edmonton Drillers and Cleveland Crunch, serves as the Club Director.

“This team will be consistent with our development philosophies,” Letherman said. “This is an opportunity for us to extend and augment the long-term development of our players, and it’s important to us that we establish a direct connection to our club’s existing style of play. The goal for us, as always, is to develop and move along talented players to higher and higher levels of play.”

Protagonist Soccer will follow Crossfire Redmond throughout its inaugural season of NPSL play. As we move toward the club’s season opener in May, we will discuss players and other key decisions the club faces moving forward.

- Brian Burden

It started as a conversation between myself and Brian Burden. We had both been talking with expansion clubs for the 2019 NPSL season and were comparing notes. Brian came up with the idea and pitched it. What if we followed these two clubs over the course of this season. Got close with the people involved, discussed the process of building a club from scratch, week by week. He came up with the idea and I named it, “Expanding the Map.” Over the next year, we’ll be working with two expansion clubs in the NPSL, each of us producing an installment article every two weeks on what the club is working on, dealing with, planning. The clubs are coming from different levels of development and vastly different parts of the country. Today is my first installment of Expanding the Map: Denton Diablos.

“We’ve got a lot that needs to come together, but I think we’re in a really good position.”

Putting together a team from scratch seems incredibly complicated from the outside looking in. Discussing that process with Damon Gochneaur, co-owner of the Denton Diablos, doesn’t make it seem any less complicated. What is clear, however, is that there is a plan for the club and they are ticking boxes off as they move towards the opening match for this expansion side.

The first and biggest focus of the club currently is staffing the team with players. To get there, the team has been holding open tryouts in Denton, looking for the right mix of players to field a competitive side in a conference full of strong teams. Two open tryouts have already been held with one more to come on the 17th of February. The tryouts that have been held have sold out and the upcoming one is on track to sell out even faster than the previous two. Two weeks out and the slots are already halfway filled.

I’ve always been curious about paid tryouts, if they are money makers for clubs, so I probed a little on how much was being charged. Denton charges $50 for entry. But Damon was quick to offer that there’s more value being offered than shot at a roster spot. “Every player gets two tickets to a home game of their choice for the Diablos’ regular season. We give them a t-shirt as well. The fee goes to the staff and actual physical logistics it takes. What I tell every kid that tries out, ‘If you come back to the club, this is the last money we’ll ever ask of you.’ Talking to other clubs at the annual owners meeting in December, if you go too low [with the fee] you get kids that aren’t qualified.” The tryouts do require a large number of staff present. At each tryout there’s 6-8 staff members, a head coach, a general manager, and one of the owners.

The tryouts has been held at a facility with two fields, each turf, and the players divided up to scrimmage against each other. The staff is evenly divided between the scrimmages to observe and collect data about the players involved. So far the team has worked out 88 players, 44 a tryout, 11 players per team to scrimmage each other. What type of players are showing up for the tryouts? “The first open tryout we had, the best player on the pitch, in my opinion, was the oldest player there, 33 years old. He was so composed on the ball, so well positioned, played with so much knowledge, you could tell. We’ve gotten everything from the youngest kid was 17… but mostly it’s kids just out of school, 19-20, 30%-40% of the group. The other group is just out of college, 22-26 [age] range, that’s another 40%-50% of the group. That’s the bulk of it.”

Denton is taking the approach to roster building in an interesting fashion. The goal is to carry a player pool, somewhere over thirty players, to offer the club flexibility for its game day roster. The players will “train, get equipment, be officially registered with the club, the whole nine yards.” The players will be competing for the starting eleven throughout the season. The club has 23 players signed and rostered, so the pool still has room to grow through the upcoming open tryout. Those already on the squad include players with “national team experience, MLS experience, international club experience. Guys are current NCAA All-Americans and local standouts.” That description certainly sounds as if Denton will be competitive from day one.

The depth of available local talent was part of the plan in putting a club in Denton. “When I made this bet, that Denton would be a great community to try and make this team home, part of it was the knowledge, that when I graduated from high school twenty years ago, I could go field a team of 15-20 guys, just out of my group, that would have been really strong. In the twenty years since then, the metroplex has exploded and with three academies, thirty classic league teams, and all of the different opportunities for kids to play now, there’s just so much talent getting turned out in the metroplex every year.” Does geography and demographics give the Diablos an advantage over other clubs? Damon certainly thinks so. “I’m not a guy who gambles much. Talent, both from a coaching standpoint and a player standpoint, I felt it was just overflowing [in Denton]. It’s crazy.”

With much of the club’s focus being on finalizing the rosters and locating player talent, the challenges of starting a club from scratch means even more for Gochneaur to deal with. “Right now, I feel like it’s the hardest it will ever be, because there’s never been more things trying to get created out of nothing with so many moving parts.” Aside from rosters, the club is working to nail down sponsors, developing and solidifying those relationships - with the goal of finalizing kit sponsorships. Kits have to be ordered for players. And there’s the issue of where games will be played. Denton is home to the University of North Texas (UNT). The Diablos have entered into an agreement with the University to play their home matches at UNT Soccer Stadium, just over 1,000 seats, but it can hold up to 3,000 - if you include standing room. But there’s still details to nail down - specifically beer sales and parking - and finding out what will be allowed in the facility as it pertains to game day atmosphere - drums, smoke, horns. “We’re 90 plus days away. We’ve got a lot that needs to come together, but I think we’re in a really good position.”

“We’re approaching the season as a brand new club, with a lot of unknowns.”

While there’s a tremendous amount of hope that Denton will be a great success, I asked Damon if he was prepared to lose money. “You have to be. You have to get into your why - why would you do this? Yes, am I prepared to. Do I plan on it, no. The first place I always go in conversations [about the club] is ‘I want to know the worst case scenario,’ because then I can plan, mitigate potential losses. So yes, I’m prepared. I’m not doing this as a part of my portfolio from an investment perspective, but we plan on creating a sustainable, and profitable club starting in year one.”

When I asked Damon about the schedule for the season, he mentioned that he didn’t want to reveal any information that wasn’t public. However, while the schedule isn’t public yet, he was willing to tell me that the beginning of May will see the first matches played in the 2019 edition of the Lone Star Conference. As Gochneaur described it, moving back from that match, the club plans on playing several friendlies in the second half of April. Which clubs will face off against Denton remains to be seen, but Gochneaur did offer that Denton’s opening regular season match would be against a conference opponent, but not against local rival, Fort Worth Vaqueros.

Looking forward to the next two weeks, the milestones are big. Later this week, the schedule should be announced for the 2019 Lone Star Conference. And with that announcement, all the things that come with a schedule can begin happening - selling tickets, planning fan engagement, building a buzz. And part of that buzz is the second milestone Damon is looking towards, announcing the first player signings for the club. As he put it - “Who and when are we playing and who will be on our team!”

- Dan Vaughn

Crossfire Redmond #1: Aligning the Levels

Denton Diablos #1: Filling the Roster