Kitsap Soccer Club Feature Interview with Coach Liviu Bird
The growth of the NPSL is hardly going unnoticed as more and more teams join the league this spring — the NPSL is very close to reaching its goal of 100 teams in 100 communities and is the Fourth Division on the U.S. Soccer pyramid.
Related Article: Kitsap SC Joins NPSL
NPSL Soccer News: With the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL) growing across all regions over the offseason, we catch up with the latest expansion clubs set to join the league for the upcoming 2017 campaign.
Kitsap Soccer Club will compete in the West Region’s Northwest Conference during its inaugural NPSL season after competing in the PDL over the past eight years.
Kitsap SC hoisted the PDL National Championship in 2011 and advanced to the final again in 2014. Kitsap has qualified for the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup on six occasions (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016) and advanced to the fourth round during the 2016 tournament.
SoccerToday spoke with assistant coach Liviu Bird on the club’s inaugural season in the NPSL and the decision to join the growing league.
Diane Scavuzzo: Why the NPSL?
Liviu Bird: We felt that the NPSL best fits our business model, and it’s a much less restrictive league in terms of the kinds of players we can sign. There are no rules regarding over-age players, and there’s a mix of professional and amateur teams in the league, whereas in the PDL, we were the only ones still labeled as a professional club. We’ve gone amateur since then, but if we ever decide in the future to make the change back, it will be an easier option in the NPSL.
In 2017, we’re moving from being a professional club to amateur status. The decision wasn’t connected with the move to the NPSL per se, but it opens up our player pool almost infinitely. Instead of looking for a very specific kind of player who is under 23 but already out of college and also within our range in terms of what we could pay and the level of play, now we’ll be able to sign players currently in college and be able to sign them without risking their eligibility.
The reality of American professional soccer is, especially without any hope for promotion by winning league, the pool of players for lower-level teams like us is a lot smaller. USL keeps expanding, making it so that those players we used to find who slipped through the cracks aren’t slipping through anymore. We expect that this move, more than the change of leagues, will make it easier for us to find the right players.
Diane Scavuzzo: When did your team form?
Liviu Bird: The club was established in 2009. We have a sole owner, Robin Waite, who was part owner of the Seattle Sounders when they were in the USL.
Diane Scavuzzo: When will you be holding tryouts?
Liviu Bird: Our tryouts for 2017 will be at the end of January and the beginning of March.
Register here.
Diane Scavuzzo: What is your background? When did you become involved in soccer?
Liviu Bird: I’ve been involved in soccer my entire life. I grew up playing the game, and I played for Highline Community College and Seattle Pacific University in college before playing professionally. I played for Kitsap for a year and had a couple of short trial stints elsewhere before I started coaching. I’ve coached at a couple different colleges as an assistant and head coach and covered soccer for Sports Illustrated for a while. I’m currently in the process of finishing my UEFA B License.
Diane Scavuzzo: What is your greatest challenge as a new NPSL team?
Liviu Bird: We’re going to do our best to make sure it’s a smooth transition in our first season in the NPSL. Our biggest challenge is the fact that we currently have only three teams in the Northwest Conference right now, but we hope the league will be able to attract some more competition for us in the near future.
It will be almost an entirely different roster for us, if for no other reason than because we’re not going to be paying our players now. A number of the 2016 players will undoubtedly receive offers from higher-level teams. I know of a couple who are going on trial or have been on trial already this offseason. Pretty much every year, I expect a big turnover because of the nature of the league and the fourth division.
We start from scratch every offseason—we currently have zero players under contract—and build up from there. Players don’t receive preference just because they played with us before. Everybody has to compete for a spot, and we’re looking forward to tryouts in January and March to see who we might be able to find, especially now that we can sign current college players.
