Seattle teen soccer star says youth coaching safeguards failed to protect her from abuse

Only while performing on the field could teenage soccer star Amy Carnell escape the turmoil engulfing her life away from it.

The attacking midfielder for the Northwest Nationals Stellarz youth select team knew once she headed to the sidelines, her coach, Michael Koslosky, would be there waiting. She’d joined his Mountlake Terrace-based Stellarz in 1997, when she was 13 and he was 40. She claims his personal phone calls, affectionate notes and gifts of trinkets and mixtapes began soon after, along with back massages and leg and thigh rubs by age 14 and sexual touching by age 15.

In September, Carnell filed a lawsuit against Koslosky and soccer associations he coached under, claiming he pressured her to go along with the abuse and she was not the only player he’d groomed. Koslosky admits he had an “inappropriate relationship” with Carnell but says it started when she was 16. He denies other accusations in the lawsuit.

Though they never had intercourse, Carnell’s lawsuit alleges the unmarried

Koslosky — who called her his “angel” — touched her intimately on a routine basis, rubbed against her and forced her to fondle him. She said he also gave her a ring and suggested marriage once she turned “legal” at age 16.

Carnell was aware some parents felt Koslosky — who’d once coached local national team icon Michelle Akers — unduly favored her soccer talents. She was terrified of revealing the truth, but part of her hoped somebody would figure it out.

“I needed somebody to step up and intervene,” Carnell said. “My whole life was soccer, but I needed to be rescued.”

And in summer 2000, when Carnell was 16, somebody apparently did sound the alarm. Carnell’s mother, according to the lawsuit, was phoned by a man who said he was from the Washington State Youth Soccer Association and who told her someone suspecting sexual abuse complained Koslosky had driven Carnell to a tournament in California alone and they’d overnighted at a hotel.

Her skeptical mother confronted the pair, who’d indeed driven alone, but they claimed others carpooled with them and parents jealous of Carnell were starting rumors. Carnell’s mother believed them and says the association — today operating as Washington Youth Soccer (WYS) — never followed up while Koslosky kept coaching and abusing her daughter, according to the lawsuit.

It was one of numerous red flags allegedly missed or forgotten around the Northwest Nationals and other teams Koslosky coached over two-plus decades through 2002, according to interviews by The

Seattle Times with former players, parents and administrators. The allegations also are in Carnell’s lawsuit claiming the coach pressured her to go along with the abuse while the soccer groups failed to protect her. Seattle attorney Lindsay Halm filed the suit in King County Superior Court against Koslosky, WYS and Sound FC — which Northwest Nationals became after a 2016 merger with FC Alliance and a 2019 rebranding.

Since Carnell filed her lawsuit, other former players have come forward, telling The Times about behavior they thought inappropriate by Koslosky since the late

1970s — describing a “touchy-feely” coach who at least three times abruptly left teams under unexplained circumstances. Carnell and others say they’re speaking out because today’s newer WYS safeguards still won’t suffice unless players and parents are better trained to spot potential “grooming” and sexual abuse by coaches.

“My life may have been totally different had people known what to watch for and not dropped the ball,” Carnell said.

Koslosky, 63, declined to be interviewed. But his lawyer, David Marshall, gave The Times a written statement saying: “Mike Koslosky admits that he did have an improper relationship with Amy Carnell when he was her coach. He fell in love with her. He deeply regrets that his emotions led him to ignore the mismatch in their ages.”

In his court response to Carnell’s lawsuit, Koslosky denied calling her “angel” or giving gifts, a ring and suggesting marriage. He admitted hiking with her alone and hugging and kissing her on a team camping trip when she was 15, but said their first unspecified “sexual contact” wasn’t until she was 16 and they were driving home from the California tournament.

Washington state law defines 16 as the legal age of consent. Intercourse and other sexual contact between coaches and minors ages 16 and 17 they supervise can still result in charges of sexual misconduct. But with those younger than 16, the charges would be child rape or molestation.

Carnell said she put a stop to the abuse right before turning 17. She later played for the University of North Carolina Greensboro and became the first general manager of the W-league Sounders Women and National Women’s Soccer League Seattle Reign.

But she says she’s battled depression and even contemplated suicide, which she attributes to Koslosky.

Before her lawsuit, Carnell last April wrote WYS — youth soccer’s governing body in this state — and suggested settling the case and that she’d help with further abuse-prevention initiatives. But she said she never heard back.

WYS CEO Terry Fisher, who joined the association in 2009, declined to comment beyond saying his organization follows U.S. Center for Safesport guidelines, including “rigorous background checks” on coaches, assistants and employees having contact with players.

“We want to protect kids,” Fisher said. “That’s what we do.”

Created in 2017 — following the USA Gymnastics scandal in which Dr. Larry Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison after more than 150 athletes said he sexually abused them — federally authorized Safesport requires mandatory coaching certification on spotting and reporting sexual abuse. But Carnell says telling a “child predator coach” what they can and can’t do won’t deter them.

“People need to understand that these are highly manipulative people. They’re just going to work around parameters they’re given,” Carnell said.

WYS had also done background checks well before Safesport came along. Former association President Pam Copple said she started using the Washington State Patrol criminal database in 1993.

“I started doing background checks on everyone at that time,” Copple said.

But Koslosky wasn’t flagged; he had no criminal record.

Carnell said predator coaches often don’t have records because reporting of sexual crimes is low. And while WYS offers parents and athletes optional online training on recognizing abuse, Carnell wants it made mandatory in structured group settings.

Her concerns are amplified by recent abuse cases in national and local youth soccer.

Ballard High School coach Meghan Miller last year received a oneyear jail sentence for molesting a 15-year-old player she’d had a twoyear relationship with. Tacoma youth coach

Kelly Bendixen, charged with inappropriately touching a 16-year-old girl he’d coached since age 8, pleaded guilty last year to a lesser charge of communication with a minor and got 30 days in jail. A youth soccer club in Olympia in 2018 paid a reported $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit by a former player claiming a coach groomed her starting at age 13 and had sex with her at 17.

None of the coaches had prior records.

On Koslosky’s teams — starting with the late-1970s Shorelake Thunderbirds, featuring Akers — he’d begin coaching girls as young as 9 and advance age levels with them as high as 18. Players said Koslosky touted his prior Akers connection to parents, claiming girls could benefit from “one-on-one” training with him.

Akers, who credits Koslosky with sparking her love of soccer from ages 9 to 11, issued a written statement that it’s “beyond disturbing to learn of the abuse allegations and shocking to hear my name was used as influence to potentially cause harm to others.”

She said she’d trusted and respected Koslosky and “can’t fathom or reconcile the two extreme and contrasting experiences of having Mike as a coach. My heart goes out to all involved.”

Koslosky’s lawyer has stated about Koslosky and Carnell: “Mike’s relationship with Amy was unique; he has never sought or had such a relationship with any other player, or with any other young person.”

But Sarah Junkin-clark, 52, who in 1979 played for a Koslosky team called the Strikers at age 11, remembers Koslosky driving her alone to extra soccer tutoring. “On the ride home, the hand was in the lap — his hand would be on my (bare) leg,” she said. “It was the brush across the chest.

... It was hands where they shouldn’t be on an 11-year-old child.”

Junkin-clark estimates there were five to seven occasions during which Koslosky touched her inappropriately, telling her, “You’re special” and “You’re different.” Uncomfortable, she said she stopped extra training and became “persona non grata” with him.

“He would say things like, ‘If you’re not willing to do the one-on-ones, then you’re not going to be good.’ “

Koslosky’s lawyer responded to the allegation by reiterating his client’s relationship with Carnell was unique and contrary assertions are false.

Junkin-clark quit the team in 1980. She said her “sexual seduction as a child” by Koslosky caused problems setting boundaries with men in her later dating life and wants to spare other children from something similar.

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