Never show up late to a sports team parent meeting — it could be the start of a new “career.”
In David Shogren’s case, it resulted in the ultimate 16-year soccer experience. Shogren was recently honored by the United Club of the Northshore Youth Soccer Association (NYSA) for his years of service as coach, referee, assignor and mentor.
“It was 1993,” Shogren, 56, says, “I was late to the first meeting of my daughter’s new rec soccer team when my wife, Mona, volunteered me as assistant coach. ‘I’m sure he can help,’ she says.”
Mona pegged Dave well. He took on the new responsibility with gusto in addition to his full-time employment at Boeing Company as a computing systems architect.
Born in Seattle, raised in Bothell (a 1971 Bothell High grad) and currently residing in Bothell, Shogren started out as a track-and-field coach having been a nationally ranked competitor well into his 40s. Since the early ’90s it’s been a different field, the soccer pitch. Serving as either head coach or assistant, Shogren, coached his kids, Samantha and Kellen’s, teams for 11 years throughout their playing time with NYSA. He was equipment manager for the organization for approximately six years.
“I hauled goals, nets, lines, did repairs,” he said, “all so I could get to the top of the list for scheduling field locations and times to do back to back practices with each of my kids’ teams.”
“When I started coaching,” Shogren added, “I discovered that if a referee didn’t show up or was unavailable, the home team had to provide one. Being the ‘fit’ coach from all my track-and-field competition, it fell on me to ref. Soon after, the club vice president in charge of referees said if I’d take this class, they’d buy the uniform and pay me! That first year I was a referee/coach for 16 matches. The next year, the VP for referees quit one month into the season and I ended up working 60 matches during the year.”
As word spreads in most soccer organizations, Shogren came to the attention of the East King County Referee Association in 1996 and continued to work for many years refereeing youth, middle and high-school and adult matches.
“The referee assignor then added League Placement Tournaments (LPTs), Olympic Development Program (ODPs) along with many other championship tournaments,” he said, “I was still working some of my kids’ matches, and in fact, had to ref my son, Kellen’s, President’s Cup BU-13 district semifinal because a referee did not show!”
A highlight he mentions is being selected to represent the state of Washington at the ODP regional camp in Wyoming, where after five years he enjoyed working international matches between Japan, Canada and the United States.
His matches continued to rise in numbers from that initial 16 to 300 in 1998, to his highest total number of 505 in 2000. In addition to his referee duties, Shogren has coached and mentored hundreds of youth referees, some of them achieving Youth Referee of the Year; he served as referee assignor and has been on soccer association boards; and started and was involved with several camp programs. After recuperating from open heart surgery in 2008, Shogren said, “I still came back and worked two matches in December that year. I either love soccer or was just plain dumb!”
Shogren’s love of soccer came to a grand total of 11 years coaching, 15 years as referee, 11 years as an assignor and five years as an instructor.
“The total that I can show on my records, although there are many more from tournaments I didn’t keep track of, I’ve reffed over 3,300 matches,” he said. “Studies have shown that a referee makes over 400 decisions during a match with about 100 whistles. So, that means I have blown a whistle over 330,000 times.
“If I do the math,” he adds, “say an average time of 40 minutes per match, I spent over 91 days on the pitch or over three months time over a span of 15 years.”
Editor’s note: In the group shot of Shogren’s award gathering are, from left to right: Bob Porter, Sarah McElrath, Jennifer Walker, Shogren, Brian Hering, United Club President Steve Ellis, United Club Vice President of Development Orlay Johnson, Dawnielle Shea and Fiona Porter.
In the referees’ shot are Chelsea Berman, left, Shogren and Sara Maukstad.
