Professional
After graduating from high school, Schmetzer chose to forego college and signed with the Seattle Sounders of the North American Soccer League (NASL) in June 1980. He spent the 1980 season with the Sounders reserves before playing with the Sounders during the 1980-1981 NASL indoor season. In the 1981 Trans-Atlantic Challenge Cup, he came on with eight minutes left in the game against Celtic. However, he saw no time in the 1981 regular season. Then in 1982, he got his break. He saw time in six games that season, then became a regular in 1983. Unfortunately for him, the Sounders folded at the end of the season. With the demise of the Sounders, Schmetzer moved to the Tulsa Roughnecks for the 1984 NASL season. However, the league collapsed at the end of the season and Schmetzer moved again, this time to the San Diego Sockers. The Sockers had begun as an NASL franchise, but had twice spent the winter playing in Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL). With the collapse of the NASL, the Sockers moved permanently to MISL. During the next decade they dominated the indoor game racking up championships nearly every season. Schmetzer was with the Sockers for four seasons, winning an MISL title in three of them. In 1988, Schemetzer moved to the Tacoma Stars. While there, he both played and he began his coaching career as an assistant coach with the Stars. Following the Sockers championship victory in 1985, San Diego loaned Schemtzer to F.C. Seattle of the Western Soccer Alliance. The team was created in 1984 after the Sounders folded to provide local and ex-NASL players an opportunity to play outside of local rec leagues. Jimmy Gabriel coached F.C. Seattle that season. Gabriel and Schmetzer would join up again when Schemtzer became head coach of the Sounders with Gabriel as his assistant. While Schmetzer played as a midfielder with Seattle, he scored both goals in a 2-1 victory over Brazilian club Santos on June 8, 1985. He played for the St. Louis Storm of the MISL for the 1990-1991 season. At the end of the season, he retired. In 1994, he came out of retirement to sign with the expansion Seattle Sounders of the American Professional Soccer League. In 1995, he played for the Seattle SeaDogs of the Continental Indoor Soccer League.
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Famous quotes containing the word professional:
“The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery.”
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“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don’t brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die—at least not in the act—and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)