Seattle Impact FC soccer coaches gone from team

Seattle Impact FC coaches Jason Dunn and Todd Haley have left the arena soccer team just days before the team’s season opener at the ShoWare Center.

The change will leave Dion Earl as the team’s owner, coach and star player.

Earl declined to comment on the abrupt changes.

The Impact, the newest member of the 23-team Major Arena Soccer League, open the season at 7:30 p.m. Saturday against San Diego, 14-time indoor soccer champion.

According to Dunn, Earl hadn’t paid either coach for their work when they asked for their checks on the contractually obligated Oct. 25 deadline.

Dunn said that Earl released him over email, but then left several messages asking him to return to the team on Monday. By then, Dunn had finalized his choice.

“To have him come out and do this to me, really just shows me the type of character he actually is,” Dunn said. “He still has a great work ethic. He’s working his butt off trying to make this thing work. But he’s a totally different person than he was 24 years ago.”

Dunn and Earl go back 20 years when they played together at Seattle Pacific University.

“He was a great guy at SPU, we played on the U23 state team,” Dunn said.

Dunn said that his departure was unrelated to Earl’s sexual harassment protection order that recently was filed in King County Superior Court. He’s attempting to get his job back with Lowe’s Hardware.

“I’m trying to get back in good graces with the job I was in,” Dunn said. “He (Earl) put me in that situation, and he doesn’t care.”

Ultimately, Haley said he’ll be staying away from the Impact because of how he was treated by Earl and that it wasn’t acceptable to him as a person.

“The mistreatment of human beings … you don’t treat people like that,” Haley said.