Sawatzky shakes underdog label

"To be honest with you, I've always been the underdog," said Sawatzky, a 27-year-old forward for the Seattle Sounders. "I've always been faster than everybody, but I wasn't the greatest soccer player."

Things have changed. Sawatzky, a 5-foot-10, 160-pound forward signed by Seattle during the off-season, is playing his first season in the A-League after four years in Major League Soccer.

"At the moment, he's leading by example" Sounders coach Neil Megson said. "We have quite a few MLS players who come into the A-League, and they think (A-League is) below them. And they kind of don't do themselves justice by not putting the effort in that will enable them to go to the MLS."

That's not the case with Sawatzky, said Megson, and it never has been.

"Darren loved the game, and he worked so incredibly hard that you almost knew that something good was going to happen for him," said Wade Webber, a former MLS player who coached Sawatzky nearly 10 years ago at Thomas Jefferson High School in Auburn. "He wasn't prepared to let other peoples' opinions stand between him and success."

As a freshman in high school, Sawatzky said he stood 4-feet-9 and weighed only 72 pounds. Even Webber remembers being told that Sawatzky wasn't much of a player.

"Up until then, I had placed a lot of faith in other people's opinions," Webber said. "That was my first lesson in, 'Don't listen to what other people say about other people.'"

After starring at Jefferson, Sawatsky was introduced by Webber to University of Portland coach Clive Charles.

However, after one season with the Pilots, Charles told Sawatzky that he couldn't see the young forward getting a lot of playing time at the Division I level. That was all Sawatzky needed to hear.

"He called me the only player that ever proved him wrong," said Sawatzky of Charles, regarded by many as one of the best coaches in the nation.

For the next three seasons, he started nearly every game for the Pilots, and was named a second-team all-West Coast Conference player in his senior year.

"Every kid goes through those periods when they are told they are not good enough, or they are not big enough, or they are not 'this' or they are not 'that,'" said Steve Sawatzky, Darren's father. "He was always, 'Well, how do I get good enough.'"

In addition to his MLS experience, Sawatzky trained professionally in Mexico and England, and was part of the U.S. National Team pool in the mid-90s.

So far, Sawatzky has paid dividends for the Sounders. He was named A-League Player of the Week earlier this month after scoring two goals -- including the winner in overtime -- against the Bay Area Seals on May 21. Sawatzky also scored two goals in the Sounders' victory over Vancouver on May 6.

Overall, Sawatzky has four goals (tied for first in the A-League) and one assist in four games. "He always had people that doubted whether or not he had the ability to play at the next level," Webber said. "To be honest, I didn't know how successful Darren would be beyond high school. But I knew that he had the attitude and the willingness to work that any successful person in any career needs to have."