Dear Washington By Joe Dale
June 12, 2026 | Men's Soccer, Student-Athlete Academic Services
Dear Washington,
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Joe Dale, and I'm a senior on the men's soccer team.
I was asked to tell the story of my time here — but my story with UW started long before I was a student. I was born right here at the UW hospital on Montlake. I grew up a stone's throw away, on the other side of that hill. I went to Roosevelt, just north of campus, and I'd been coming to Husky soccer camps since I was four. I really didn't make it far? For me, this place has never been just a school. It was always home — and home gave me something to play for.
As I was a high school senior and I was told no — that I couldn't play here — that was a hard thing to hear from the place I really loved. But I was set on my dream, and after months of being told to look elsewhere, I called Coach Jamie Clark and said, "I'm coming to UW as a student — I hope you've got a spot for me." In classic Jamie fashion he said… maybe, next year. And then, two weeks before preseason he called. I'd be walking on for the fall, wearing the purple and gold.
What came next is hard to put into words, so instead of every score, I'll tell you what each year taught us. Our freshman year, we learned from the sidelines — most of us redshirted, watching, learning, and making sure we took down the hot chocolate supply before ninety minutes were up. Nani Deperro, as memory goes, drank fourteen. The team won a Pac-12 title that year, only for the season to end far too early in the tournament. Sophomore year, a few of us got our first chance to play but our season ended on the very last day, just short of the tournament. Junior year was about belief; we went deeper in our competitions, our first year in the Big Ten and going to the round of 32 in the tournament. Through all these seasons I know that we always thought we belonged with the best.
And then came our senior year. We started slowly — two losses, two ties, and a win — and the doubts crept in. But somewhere in there, as a group, we went from thinking we were a good team to actually being a great team. We won nine of our next ten, only to lose our final three regular season games. We went into selection day with our hopes at the tournament hanging by a thread — no cameras, just a quiet room, until, in the bottom-left corner of the bracket, unseeded, there was Washington.
Everything that came next, we did on the road — tens of thousands of miles, including heading back to Maryland for the third time that season, every postseason game in someone else's building, against teams that had ended our seasons before. And we kept winning. We made our way to the College Cup, and then, in front of ten thousand NC State fans who came to watch us lose, we won the first national championship in the history of Washington men's soccer.
Here's what I've thought about most since that night: we won all of it away from home, and yet we were never really away — because the home we'd built came with us. That home was a group of guys. My teammates, my best friends — we have spent nearly every waking hour together these four years. Our house, nicknamed Buffet, has brought us impossibly close: barbecues to family dinners, movie nights to baking apple pies from scratch at 1am.
We used to make passing comments about winning it all, back when we were redshirt freshmen in the dorms. And we graduate today with a humble smile — knowing the work it took, the tears it cost, and the simple truth — that what we dreamed, we spoke of, and what we spoke of, four years later, we did.
But our UW experience did not just give us a lot of soccer memories to reminisce on. Our years here at UW gave us life, the full spectrum, taking us to highs as well as through tough times. Today as we celebrate Mia, I want to say this. I believe that words can never fully capture the feelings that memories hold and evoke. Every one of us that lived life with her carry special moments, we know how meaningful her impact on us continues to be. Collectively we celebrate those memories, we cherish the feelings we still hold, and by that we carry her with us for the rest of our lives.
UW was home long before it was ever my school. But I know now that it wasn't the campus, or the stadium, or being born just up the hill that made it home — it was the people, and the stories that we added to our lives and the legacy of this university. UW gave us the chance to live out our dreams. I'll be grateful for that forever.
Thank you, Washington.
Go Dawgs.
