Tacoma Defiance are a team in progress

Charis Wilson/Tacoma Defiance Tacoma Defiance officially came into being back in January, re-branding from Sounders FC 2 and becoming a fully-integrated part of the Sounders developmental pipeline. That integration may have seemed like somewhat of a formality for anyone who had been watching the team in the previous years as current and former academy players filled the XI and the 18 every week, but formally making the team an extension of the Sounders academy system was a commitment to the plan of producing players for the first team.

This wasn’t the beginning of a new process, but a continuation of one, and there was hope that a team of young players that struggled but had gotten important…