Dylan Teves and his family
RISK REWARDED took the ultimate shot and scored with a life-changing move from Hawaii to Seattle and found Husky heaven
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hen Dylan Teves was 15-years old as a promising soccer prodigy in Kailua, Hawaii, he was at the crossroads of his playing future. Folks he trusted were telling him that if he hoped to be recruited, if he hoped to play in a big-time college program, or even professional soccer one day, he would have to leave the island. They told him that he needed to test his skills on the mainland, increasing his exposure and hastening his development against enhanced competition. That’s what he chose to do, taking a leap of faith as wide as the ocean, the Pacific, in this case. Dylan decided to come to Seattle. He was all in. What he didn’t expect was that the whole Teves family was all in as well. In a grand show of support, his parents decided to pull up stakes in Kailua, buy a house in Renton, Wash., and enroll Dylan and his younger sister Liv in the Issaquah school system. Dylan played soccer for Liberty High School (Liv plays there now). Those who cared would share Dylan’s dream. “My mother (Tracy) sacrificed a lot, leaving friends, family, loved ones, the food, the weather,” said Dylan, a redshirt junior midfielder and critical performer for the first-ranked WashPAGE 22
BY BOB SHERWIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
ington Huskies soccer team. “I’m grateful to them for their support. I know a lot of families would be hesitant. They were really supportive, that’s for sure.” Dylan’s father, a pilot for then Sino Jet, had the flexibility and freedom to move anywhere. He just needed to commute to his job from across the world, but it was worth it to watch his son’s career evolve. Yet he also went through some unexpected sacrifices during the transition caused by the pandemic. He was restricted to flights in and around Hong Kong, preventing him from traveling back to Seattle. “We were eight months without him,” Dylan said. “It’s been tough on him. He sacrificed, too.” As Dylan embarked on his Seattle journey, there were times when he worried that this major family uprooting would turn into a regrettable misadventure. Would this be one big mistake? Maybe his teenage dream of playing for a top-level NCAA Division I program was someone else's dream. “This was a big game-changer for me,” he said. “I was never really super confident in my abilities. I was telling coaches that my dream was to play in Division II or Division III programs.”
Continued on page 24 GoHUSKIES
