On July 27, 2020, inside the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, the fourth official put two jersey numbers on the electronic substitution board and held it up into the hot and humid night sky of Orlando, Florida. The bright red number on the board showed number eleven. Jordan Morris is coming off, no big deal, he doesn’t normally play a full match anyway. Then, all eyes turned to the bright green number on that same board. It showed number 45, the jersey number of the homegrown product, and former Roosevelt High School student, Ethan Dobbelaere. The extraordinary 18 year old had just made his Seattle Sounders first-team debut.
I had the privilege to talk to Ethan on the phone earlier this month. He generously shared his experience from the “MLS is Back” tournament, where he made his Sounders debut. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the “MLS is Back” tournament was a sort of bubble for all the competing teams to stay and play in. The idea of the bubble, of course, is to contain the virus from spreading to others.
“We stayed in a resort, it was one big bubble… [On a] normal day, we would get tested in the morning for COVID, and then we would go out to practice. We got there about two weeks before we started playing games,” says Dobbelaere.
Dobbelaere continues, “Once we started playing games, it was pretty much the same scenario except we would test the night before and drive to a different facility to play the games.” Clearly, safety was paramount during the entire event, with testing and retesting to make sure everything was good to go.
Dobbleaere explained how he got the opportunity to play for the Sounders: “I started in their academy the summer before I went into seventh grade, so about five years ago now.” The academy is a feeder for the first-team, to develop players to play at the first team level.
Dobbelaere would be a full-time senior at Roosevelt this year if he was not on the Sounders.
“I was with their academy long enough, that helped me develop a ton. Just being around the staff, you have better connections. It’s a pipeline to develop talent. It created a pathway to get into the second team, and then the first team.” The academy system for youth soccer seems to be a valuable pathway, as it can lead to bigger and better things. For Dobbelaere, it gave him the opportunity to accomplish his dream.
When asked what advice he would give to other student athletes looking to play professionally, Dobbelaere said, “Just keep working. It’s important to not lose faith and each day to keep going at it.”
“One more thing,” Dobbelaere added as the interview was coming to a close, “Be willing to take criticism and learn from it.”
This advice is something anyone can take to heart, not just in sports, but in life in general, to be better than we were the day before.
