We’re just about to start our new season, but the Midlakes coaching staff has been hard at work for some time planning, recruiting, and training. Ahead of the first match, we wanted to give fans the chance to get to know the fearless leaders at the helm this year. So without further ado, we present the 2025 Midlakes United coaching staff!
Head Coach Felix Vu
As both a player and coach, Felix Vu has a long history of defying expectations. He started playing senior soccer at age 15, a level in Australia where the average age is about 30. He moved to the US for college, and his team at West Virginia’s Alderson Broaddus University went 4-13 his freshmen year. His last year, they were nationally ranked and won their conference. As a coach at Indian Hills Community College, he led the team to their first district championship and their most successful run ever in the national tournament. They ranked 9th in the NJCAA D1, and he won Coach of the Year for his region. At Ferrum college, Felix’s team made their first ever post-season appearance and got to the quarter final of the conference tournament.
Growing up in Australia, soccer was everywhere around Felix. He always played, and his dad was a huge fan. He particularly remembers his dad bringing home a ball with all the 2006 World Cup teams’ flags on it that came as a promo giveaway with a case of beer. Felix thought the ball “looked awesome,” and spent hours kicking it against the wall in his family’s backyard.
Moving to the US for college was culture shock on multiple levels. Felix went from his Vietnamese-speaking home “in the middle of Melbourne, where everything was five or ten minutes away, to a small town in West Virginia where it was thirty minutes to the closest Walmart.” But by all accounts, he settled in well, and he remembers fondly the relationships he formed with his team there. He played in semi-pro leagues during summers at home in Australia, and later had stints playing on a UPSL team in Texas and an MASL2 team in Missouri.
Now, he’s the Director of Goal Keeping for the MLS Next’s Seattle Celtic, and coordinates their strength and conditioning while coaching the second U-17 side. He’s also working on a UEFA B license.
Felix is looking forward to learning a new context in the USL2. He knows the assignment is creating team cohesion in a short space of time to compete at a high level, and that’s an invigorating new challenge.
He’s also enthusiastic about being in Bellevue. “I’m excited to represent the Eastside.” He knows there’s a “strong football identity” here, and he says “I want the club to be successful and be a presence that fans can be invested in.”
Assistant Coach Ryan Faithfull
One of Ryan Faithfull’s favorite soccer memories is the game when he broke his leg. Why? “Short-term pain, long-term gain,” he says. It effectively ended his career as a young player. But it made him try coaching, which he has happily—and successfully—done for more than 15 years.
A native of New Zealand, he married an American and wound up in Seattle, working for the USSF as a talent ID analyst and coaching local youth teams. Ryan led the U-17 Sounders Academy squad to a Generation Adidas Cup championship victory in 2019 against some of the best youth clubs across the country and the world.
Back in New Zealand from 2020 to 2024, Ryan held a few different coaching positions. He also had a daughter during that time. And technically less-importantly, he got to be in the stands for a couple matches of the 2023 Women’s World Cup, which New Zealand and Australia jointly hosted.
He’s currently the Boys and EA Director of Seattle Celtic. For the USSF, he now breaks down video for the Extended National Teams, like beach soccer, power wheelchair, and deaf teams.
He’s excited for this year. “I’ve never worked in the USL2 before … I’m looking forward to seeing how that looks and feels.” Ryan knows Felix and others on the Midlakes staff from Celtic, and he’s confident in what Felix will bring to the table in this new context.
But the most rewarding thing to Ryan is seeing his work pay off in the success of his players. And the fruit of his labor will be right there on the field from day one, as a few players from his old Sounders Academy teams suit up for Midlakes.
Assistant Coach/Video Analyst Séan Doyle
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been involved with and fascinated by soccer,” says Séan Doyl. “I played every sport I could find,” he recounts. But when push came to shove, the choice wasn’t hard. The big decision was when he was eight or nine years old, and his youth leagues in Ireland had his teams’ soccer and rugby matches scheduled on the same day each week. He picked soccer and played at a self-described “reasonable level” until he was 16.
His focus shifted to coaching, which brought him to the US. He spent several years around Chicagoland developing relationships between the Fire and local clubs.
Returning to his home country for college, he worked a number of coaching and analyst rolls with academy and senior teams in the League of Ireland. Some of his favorite soccer memories are from that period. A particularly proud moment came during his tenure with the women’s youth team at Wexford FC where one of his hardest-working players scored the pivotal goal in their championship-winning match on national TV in the Football Association of Ireland Cup.
He’s been back stateside since November, directing the U-19 girl’s program at Seattle Celtic, and coaching three other teams there as well.
Séan is thrilled to be a part of Midlakes, “a new project with a lot of ambition” and “so much potential.” He knows the coaches have a wide range of high-level skills, and he’s eager to create something dynamic with them.
He also knows exactly what he wants to accomplish as a coach and leader. Create an environment where everyone—players, coaches, and fans—get to “Be a part of something worth being a part of.”
Goal Keeper Coach Elmer Rodriguez
The first time Elmer Rodriguez played in goal, it was against his will. He wanted to play forward, so he protested. Because he was six-years-old, that protest took the form of hugging the post and watching a different game happening on a nearby field. He let six goals through. His mother, to put it mildly, was not happy. So the next game, he put in the effort, and it was a complete shutout. He still remembers how good he felt that day, and he’s lived in the box ever since.
Soccer was a central fixture of Elmer’s childhood in southern California. It was ever present in his family’s culture, in part because his uncle played for El Salvador’s national team. “I fell in love at an early age,” Elmer says. And the game helped him personally. “I was an always-active kid. Soccer kept me calm.” One of his favorite memories is when his English youth coach connected him to a professional team in the UK who invited Elmer and some of his teammates to train for almost a month. Getting a chance as a 16-year-old to experience the atmosphere of the pros in Europe—and even play in a friendly or two—was formative.
As a coach, he has developed and led goal keeper training programs for teams like Crossfire Premier, Northwest University, and the Snohomish County Steelheads. He was also Assistant Coach for the women’s team at Northwest.
Elmer can’t wait to get started. “I love the way everything is running at Midlakes. … I’m looking forward to being able to give back to the athletes.” In all his coaching, he wants to be a positive role model to the players and the community. And he loves the Eastside. “I’ve been here in Washington for 15 years, and everything has just been great.”
What else is he looking forward to this year? “Winning the league.”
Volunteer Assistant Coach Wilson Kasinga
Wilson Kasinga was on the inaugural Midlakes coaching staff last year. He says it was a “brilliant learning environment” with a “strong group of players.” This year, he is helping with both day-to-day coaching and video analysis for Midlakes.
There has never been a real question that Wilson was going to be involved in soccer long-term. After his family moved from Kenya when he was very young, he began playing around Seattle at the age of eight. “It was a love at first sight kind of thing,” he recalls. And his two older brothers always lit the path ahead. He vividly remembers watching their Eastside FC games, and one brother playing at Harvard. So he understands the importance of teams like Midlakes. Young athletes get to “see high standards of play and visualize themselves taking that next step as a player.” “The USL2 makes … a young kid’s soccer journey more visible and more accessible.”
Wilson played for Eastside FC too, and that’s where some of his favorite soccer memories were. He’ll never forget travelling up and down the west coast for tournaments, and their 2012 state championship win. That’s also where he met Kei Kinoshita, the inspirational coach after whom he models his own leadership style. Wilson especially treasures the memory of being 14 years old and taking a two-week trip that Kinoshita organized for the team to play in Japan.
Unfortunately, Wilson tore his ACL during his junior year of high school and spent the crucial college recruitment period healing. But just like Ryan, the injury made him explore coaching, which was an “unexpected” but “immediate passion.” He started with kids, and quickly made his way back to his old organization at Eastside FC, where he coaches today. Wilson says he is always trying to “improve my knowledge basis as a coach,” so he readily threw himself into the licensing process. He has a USSF C license and is on track to get his B license this summer.
In its first season, he thought Midlakes “did a great job creating a very positive and welcoming and exciting atmosphere.” Now he wants to “Take the platform we created last year to a new level.”
Volunteer Assistant Coach Sybren Russell
Sybren Russell has been playing soccer for all but two of the years he has been alive, thanks to his mother putting him in a program called Lil Kickers as a toddler. He tried lots of other sports, “but I always ended up back on the pitch.” He played a few years behind Wilson at Eastside FC. Sybren was there for eight years, and then played four years in college D2 as a wingback for the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.
For the second half of his time at UCCS, Sybren was on the team leadership group, an experience he draws on for coaching. Just before he joined the group, there were significant shake-ups in the roster and coaching staff. “Being part of leadership then was about setting and creating a new culture.” This meant laying down clear expectations, but also establishing a supportive environment, communicating to the new players “You belong and we care about one another.” He’s excited to take the lessons from that time into Midlakes’ season where the new crop of players will have to create cohesiveness quickly.
Sybren has a USSF D license, and currently works as a youth coach for—you guessed it—Seattle Celtic. He’s looking forward to “learning from the incredible minds on the coaching staff” at Midlakes and he can’t wait to get to know the new faces on the team.
Sybren has the distinction of being a Bellevue native who was a Midlakes fan before becoming a coach. His advice to fellow fans: “the Dock,” where Midlakes sells the beer, “is a great place to watch the game.” He knows from experience.
