Oly Town and Oly Pen Force opened the 2019-20 WISL season with a knock-down drag-out fight at the Oly-Pen Sports Center. The Force scored four times in the first quarter of an hour and it looked out of reach, early, for the Artesians, who hadn’t won since December 2017. However, Oly Town’s defense allowed only two more goals on the night and put on a show in the fourth quarter, matching Oly-Pen’s first quarter output, with four goals to steal the away win 9-6. The Artesians head to Snohomish next, to take on a Skyhawks team who are coming off a 3-6 away loss to last year’s champions Tacoma Stars Reserves. To get a better idea of what Oly Town Artesians are all about and how they’re approaching the rest of their season, we spoke with Brandon Sparks, the club’s General Manager.

Since its inception a few years ago, a few clubs have come and gone from the WISL, as a founding member, what do you do to ensure your participation each year?

The Oly Town Artesians were originally founded as an indoor team by myself and Tim Smith, the owner of Olympia Indoor Soccer, so we have long been committed to playing in the Western Indoor Soccer League. It doesn't take much to ensure our participation because it is such a fun version of the game to watch and, for me personally, it is the most fun season to produce because we get to do a lot more in game with music, contests, games and whatever we can do to put on a show. We generally have larger, more engaged crowds during our indoor season despite some challenges we have with our arena (our home for the past five seasons that is partially open to the elements, has no heat, and has the smallest field in the league and was supposed to be our temporary home when our first facility was forced to move) and a less than stellar record on the field.

It helps that we have control of our indoor field and have ownership that allows us to have field time. If you look at the history of the WISL, the majority of teams that have left have done so because of facility issues, not performance on the field or because they didn't like it. The Arlington Aviators and Wenatchee Fire had their indoor centers close; the Everett Arena never had a lot of available time and charged a mint for field time so Sporting Everett dropped out of the league. The building that housed our first facility was sold to a glass company and Olympia Indoor and a tennis center had to move. Luckily John Purtteman and The Evergreen State College had an arena field in The Pavilion that we could use and we loved our first season so much, we wanted to continue at all costs.

Oly Town Artesian supporters show up to cheer on their club, rain or shine, because while indoors that doesn’t matter! (photo: Oly Town Facebook)

Oly Town Artesians also field a team in the EPLWA, which means you get play against Bellingham United and Oly Pen Force outdoors too. Do you see the same players from their squads? Are the tactics similar enough that you know what to plan for? Or is Indoor and Outdoor totally different?

The tactics for indoor and outdoor are almost completely different, so while we see some of the same players, you can't really take much from performances between the two seasons. But player-wise, you do see a lot of the same faces, especially for Bellingham. We will see guys like Richard Henderson, Eleazar Galvan, Noe Betancourt Cruz and Uriel Herrera in both leagues and know what those guys can do. The Hammers have a lot of quality veteran players that stick around town year-round even after they graduate from Western Washington or Whatcom CC, so you see them during both seasons. They have built a fantastic club that players want to stick with and it shows with their results on the field.

Oly-Pen is a little different because their roster for outdoor is often very different than their indoor roster. They focus on younger collegiate players for their outdoor season and most of those players are not available or in the area for indoor. Their indoor team also used to draw from Kitsap Pumas players that came to the area and stuck around during the off season, but with the loss of the Pumas, those players aren't coming to town. Oly-Pen doesn't have a natural player pool - there are no colleges with soccer in Kitsap County (Tacoma is the closest city with collegiate soccer and it is 35 miles away), so their roster will likely be different than the group they had in the early years of the WISL. They also have a brand-new coach for the first time since they joined the WISL, indoor legend Dan Antoniuk, who I'm sure will put his own spin on that roster.

While they are not the same organization, a lot of the Tacoma Stars Reserves team also plays for Washington Premier in the EPLWA, so we see a ton of them in both seasons. And starting this season, the EPLWA will welcome Tacoma Narrows and a team from Everett, so we expect to see a lot more Narrows guys and Snohomish Skyhawks players year-round.

Speaking of indoor squads vs outdoor squads, do you have players who only play one season but maybe don't play both? Or do most of your outdoor players end up on your WISL team?

We have a small core group of players that play both indoor and outdoor. Nate Boatright, in particular, has been with both teams since our very first season and our goalkeeper, JJ Olson, is another guy that has been with both teams for a long time. There is a fair amount of crossover and we would love to have both teams together all year long in the same way that Bellingham does, but we also rely on a lot of college players for both seasons, so we get guys for outdoor that leave for college during the indoor season and indoor players that go home for the summer and aren't available for the outdoor season.

Oly Town heads up to play Shohomish Sky to face the Ginger Jesus himself, John Troka. (photo: Oly Town Facebook)

Bellingham and Tacoma Stars Reserves seem to have the league figured out - how do you break up their stranglehold on the title?

That is the million-dollar question. Honestly, we are all chasing those two squads. We had a rough season on the field last year but nearly knocked off Bellingham in the last game of the season, so anything is possible. You look at those two teams and you will see consistency. They retain players really well through the years, fold in new, talented players when necessary, and just keep on rolling. We seem to constantly have to train new players to play the indoor game, and it takes a long time to get them up to speed. So, while the Stars Reserves and Bellingham are working on the nuances of the game with their experienced indoor players, we are teaching the basics year in and year out. Even really talented players need time to figure the indoor game out. It isn't as simple as it looks.

And, to be bluntly honest, we need a new facility. I think that we have a really great situation with three colleges in our area all with soccer programs, we should be able to draw more of them out to play indoor with us and hopefully have them stick with us through college and beyond. But while The Pavilion is a fun place to see a game, it is not a selling point for players. The Bellingham Sportsplex is great. The Tacoma Soccer Center is great. Oly-Pen Sports is great. The Snohomish Soccer Dome is a little worn, but it is warm and has other amenities that we don't have. We have been in our "temporary" home in a converted play shed on the campus of The Evergreen State College for five seasons now. Until we have a facility that measures up to the other facilities in the league, we are always going to start a little behind.

Honestly, Oly Town is known for dropping some pretty cool swag, aside from some swashbuckling indoor soccer, what do we have to look forward to in the merch department this year?

We don't have much new merch planned for this indoor season, but I would expect new gear for our outdoor season. But I'm always doing new designs and I love getting stickers printed. We lead the league in stickers, for sure, and I'm always willing to get them out to people. Fans from around the country can drop me a message and we are happy to send a couple out.

- Joshua Duder

Masters of design; Oly Town’s Brandon Sparks regularly comes up with amazing new stickers and graphics to promote the club from Olympia, Washington.

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