SEATTLE — With less than an 8% chance to make it onto a college roster, in any division, aspiring college soccer players need all the advice they can get.
"[We're here to] try to help some of these people have a more healthy experience and less stressful," said Jen Barnes, Rough and Tumble Pub owner.
The student-athletes came to the right place. Barnes hosted a round-table discussion at Rough and Tumble Pub featuring Reign FC general manager Lesle Gallimore and defender Shae Holmes, as well as professional therapists Christy and Doug Sweaney Herrick, to speak directly to high schoolers and their families.
"It's important to hear it from both sides, parents and athletes alike, because it is - it takes a village," Holmes said.
She understands both sides -- as does Gallimore. Before taking over at the Reign, Gallimore spent more than 30 years coaching collegiate soccer, 26 of those at the University of Washington. She's seen it all.
"But I've also seen sort of the ugly side of it, which are the pressures that parents and coaches and money and the negative things that start to swallow up the joy of soccer and sport for players, including the time where they've tried to earn this opportunity to be recruited," Gallimore said.
Holmes earned her opportunity from Gallimore. Their bond goes back more than a decade, and the former Husky defender urges young athletes to evaluate their future coaches the same way they're evaluated in the recruiting process.
"I might've liked a lot of other colleges, but it does matter about the coach and the person that you're going to be kind of under for the next four years or however many years," Holmes said. "And you don't always pick a college for a coach, but I really am grateful and blessed that my coach was Lesle for some of those years."
Gallimore said recruiting took a full 180 since she left UW six years ago. Now she said the landscape is unsettled.
"Back when I coached, I escaped in 2019, but back when I coached, the transfer portal was just starting to be a thing," Gallimore said. "It seems like it changes daily, rules, compliance, money, just overall competition and equity and trying to figure out how mid-major schools are going to compete with power five schools. Let's just leave it at this: There's no more Pac 12, which I find to be the most tragic thing ever."
Still, Gallimore remains optimistic about the future of the sport and the next generation fighting for a place in it.
"This game has given me everything," Gallimore said. "So, my journey and the things that I've been able to do because of sport and because of soccer and because of this community, is really, really meaningful and I'll always look at it as an opportunity to pay it forward."