‘It’s a really special moment for me’: Spokane’s Craig Waibel returns home as GM of Seattle Sounders

When Craig Waibel was offered a front-office position with the Seattle Sounders in 2021, he recognized it as a rare opportunity.

For those working in the sports business, he noted, it’s not common to land a job near home.

“It was a pretty obvious choice,” Waibel said. “To get to go back to a club that I started my pro career with, out of the University of Washington. That just doesn’t happen very often. Sports just don’t take you home very often.”

The Sounders brought Waibel back to his second home. Now the general manager for the MLS club, Waibel’s job is bringing him back to the city he grew up in.

“Now, it’s really taking me home,” he said, laughing. “Seattle is obviously near and dear, given those formative years. That’s pretty unique. Then to be a part of this as it comes back to Spokane, it’s a really special moment for me. The organization coming to Spokane is huge, and the moment shouldn’t be missed.”

The Sounders will play the Vancouver Whitecaps in the second leg of the CONCACAF Champions Cup Round of 16 at 8 p.m. Wednesday at ONE Spokane Stadium. It’s the first time in more than 20 years that the Sounders have made the trip over the mountains for a match in Spokane. It’ll be the team’s first appearance here as an MLS club, and it’s an official match with stakes – unlike the exhibitions the Sounders occasionally played in Spokane during the franchise’s first iteration as a second-tier A-League club.

“I don’t make every game, but I won’t miss this,” Waibel said. “It’s pretty amazing the way life works sometimes.”

Waibel, 50, was born in Portland but spent his early years in Lewiston before the family moved to Coeur d’Alene when he was in third or fourth grade. They settled in Spokane when Waibel was in junior high, then he became a three-time All-Greater Spokane League defender at Lewis and Clark High.

The Sounders will fly to Spokane on Tuesday and train at ONE Spokane Stadium ahead of their match. Waibel will be here a little earlier, “just because I’ve got some reminiscing to do,” he said. He’ll check out his old house and visit Manito Park, where he used to spend summers working in the gardens.

“I’ll get my reflection of my youth and try to remind myself that at one point I was young,” he said.

Although Waibel’s family has moved out of the area, he still maintains a connection to Spokane. He keeps in touch with several friends who live in the city, and he’s made the occasional trip here for his daughter’s youth sports tournaments at the Podium.

“I’ve heard from so many of my friends in the game and outside the game that are huge Sounders fans that just happen to live in Spokane,” Waibel said. “I’ve rediscovered a lot of friends that need tickets, I’ll say that. But there’s a ton of excitement. It’s really going to be something for our players to experience. They don’t get a lot of exposure to the eastern side of Washington, so it’s going to be a cool moment for them to reconnect, and for most of them, to initially connect with that side of the state and that fan base.”

It’s something of a full-circle moment for Waibel, who fondly recalls playing for a Spokane-area youth all-star team and matching up against the A-League Sounders in an exhibition match in the mid-1990s at Central Valley High.

“I know what kind of impact that had on the community when we did it that many years ago,” Waibel said. “It’s really neat to be on this side of it and bring something special over there. It’s such a cool, special moment for us as an organization to come back over and play a real game, an official game.”

The Sounders’ home venue of Lumen Field is undergoing renovations as it prepares to host FIFA World Cup games this summer, so Seattle brass had to decide a couple of months ago on a different site for Wednesday’s match.

Waibel listened patiently as a few Seattle-area stadiums were tossed around. Someone brought up Spokane. When it was his turn to speak, Waibel “was pretty emphatic” in his support of the idea.

“I was always going to say Spokane,” he said. “Once it boiled down to the decision-making phase, they asked where I thought we would have the best reception and, for me, it was undoubtedly Spokane. My vote was based on the fact that I know what we’re going to walk into, the level of support and excitement we’re going to receive. I couldn’t have been a bigger cheerleader once I got to speak. It didn’t take long once they heard my level of support.

“It was perfectly aligned, and for someone like me, given my life history, it’s a really cool moment.”

After wrapping up his LC career, Waibel played for UW, where he was a two-year captain and helped lead the school to consecutive NCAA Tournaments. He also played for the Spokane Shadow of the Premier Development League and still has his jersey from the team’s inaugural season in 1996. He played with some of his Spokane soccer idols with the Shadow, helping the team to the PDSL Western finals in 1997, which were held at the old Joe Albi Stadium.

“It was typical Spokane, a scrappy effort from everyone to find a way to make it successful. Those years are really near and dear,” Waibel said of the Shadow. “It was the definition of how Spokane reacts as a community when teams come into it. It’s a great city for support. Those memories inspired me to pursue bigger opportunities. The platform of playing there is what gave me confidence to play in front of crowds, to play without fear. People showed up with great support, game in and game out.”

In 1999, the Sounders selected Waibel in the A-League draft. He played for the club for two years and went on to a fruitful 11-year career as an MLS defender, which included MLS Cup championships with the Los Angeles Galaxy (2002), the San Jose Earthquakes (2003) and the Houston Dynamo (2006-07). As a player, Waibel made his name “by being a physical presence” on the defensive side, an “intense competitor” who didn’t shy away from contact.

After his playing career, Waibel served briefly as an assistant at the University of Michigan, the University of Washington and Real Salt Lake, then transitioned into a front-office role with the latter. He became Real Salt Lake’s GM in 2015 and stayed there until stepping away in 2019.

Waibel decided to return to the game in 2021, and by chance, the Sounders wanted him for an assistant GM role. A year later, he was elevated to Seattle GM. Waibel has been a part of Sounders teams that won the CONCACAF Champions League and Leagues Cup titles.

“When I retired (from playing), as a lot of athletes do, you search for this new identity,” Waibel said. “Some of the advice I got was, ‘Until you fall out of love with soccer, don’t walk away from it.’ … I haven’t looked back. I really enjoy what I do. It’s really rewarding to get the right people in the right places and encourage them to continue to grow and evolve.”

Throughout his life in soccer, Waibel has seen first hand how the sport has grown across the region and throughout the U.S. in general. Seattle has become something of an American soccer hotbed, boasting one of the most successful clubs in MLS.

In Spokane, soccer support was a bit more “covert,” during Waibel’s playing time here, though he recalls Shadow games still drawing 2,000 or more fans. But the city’s soccer bona fides have grown exponentially in recent years with the introduction of the Spokane Velocity and Spokane Zephyr pro clubs, plus the construction of ONE Spokane Stadium. Waibel said the support is evidenced by the fact tickets for Wednesday’s match sold out within two days.

“This is really a moment of recognition,” he said of the match. “Not only from the sport itself, but from the Sounders organization, to make it a priority to come over and get some exposure to what we know is a fan base that exists that we just don’t get to cater to in person very often. Hopefully, it’s a moment of exposure for some young kids in Spokane to dream big. … I know that’s how it impacted me when I was fortunate enough to play against them. It’s another moment in the sports history of Spokane that’ll go down as one more dot on the timeline that helps this continued excitement for soccer.”