This month’s Athlete Spotlight Interview was a double feature, with Glacier Peak HS Junior, Liam Smith. Read on to learn more about Liam and his time playing soccer at Glacier Peak and for Snohomish United.

SCSC: Why did you start playing soccer?

LIAM: When I was around 3-4 years old, my family moved to Portugal. My dad was in the Navy, we were stationed there for a while. Soccer is a huge part of their culture over there. My brother and I started playing for a Portuguese team over there when we were really young. Once we got back to the US few years later, my brother was really big into soccer, and I, naturally, wanted to be like my older brother, so I quit some of the other sports I was playing and just went full in on soccer. That definitely sparked my interest, and I got to play with him a lot.

SCSC: What’s your favorite thing about playing with Snohomish united?

LIAM: When I moved to Snohomish United from another club a couple years ago, I had Anthony’s as my coach for the past two years, I was shocked to see the next level of coaching. That made me like Snohomish a lot, because I saw the next level and there was lots of competition. I also went to ECNL and other clubs don’t have that. So that was a great addition for me to get seen. I think they do really well with setting you up with colleges and preparing you for the next level of soccer.

SCSC: Do you have any teams or players that you look up to?

LIAM: I’ve loved Real Madrid for a long time. I love their play style a lot. I love De Bruyne as attacking mid. I love his play style and his soccer like IQ is just super crazy. I watch how he plays and try to learn from him. I’d say that’s the player that I look up to.

SCSC:  Do you have a pregame routine?

LIAM: Yes. I’d say for games in the evening, where I’m sitting around the whole day, I try to have the game on my mind so I’m preparing throughout the day. Usually, I’ll just wake up with enough time to eat, definitely a couple hours before the game, and then I’ll just sit in my living room and stretch for like 15-20 minutes, because my flexibility is terrible anyways, so I’m trying to improve that. I’ll stretch, and then I’ll drink a bunch of water, and I’ll listen to music sometimes. I always watch a Premiere League game, or some high-level soccer before. It makes me want to play soccer. After that, I’ll go out and play the game. That gets me motivated.

SCSC: Who has been the most Influential coach or mentor throughout your soccer career?

LIAM: JameyMartinez from Rush. He was my second or third coach there, but when I had him at the beginning, I noticed how much he loved the game and he put so much effort into our team, and he really cared about the results. Before that, I maybe hadn’t had as much passion for soccer, and after having him as a coach, it kind of made me relate to him, and I admired how much passion he had for the game.

SCSC: What are some lessons that being an athlete has taught you?

LIAM: It definitely teaches you a lot about working with a team, and that you can’t do it all yourself. You have to work with the people around you and take what you have.

SCSC: What’s been your favorite memory of playing with Glacier Peak High School?

LIAM: My favorite memory was definitely when we beat Lake Stevens to win the Wesco title. We played them a couple times last season, and they have always been our biggest rival in the high school season. We played them a couple times and they were really close games. This last season, we played them in a big game, and we beat them in overtime again, and it was just great. We all celebrated after the game. We were all super happy winning Wesco for the first time in a long time for the team.

SCSC: What are you most looking forward to in your final two years of high school? Are there any goals that you or your team has that you want to accomplish before you graduate?

LIAM: This year we lost like13 seniors. Our team is going to be pretty much reset for next few years. I think the next year is going to be a building year, and try to work our way up again, because we did lose our whole starting lineup. It’ll be tough. We just need to work hard and then develop the players that we do have. Hopefully by the senior year we could do well in districts and hopefully advance to state.

SCSC: What is it that you want to do after you graduate? Are you looking at specific schools?

LIAM: I definitely want to keep playing soccer after high school. Hopefully that’s possible, but if not, pretty much all schools have some kind of club soccer. There’s always going to be some way that I could be playing soccer and I’m definitely going to do that.

Keep up with Glacier Peak Men’s soccer next season at Glacier Peak Boys Soccer | Wesco League (wescoathletics.com).