CAMAS — It’s mid-November, the offseason for high school boys soccer. Dan Macaya is cleaning out a storage cage inside the boys locker room at Camas High School, when he stumbled on a group of heavy boxes.
Curious, the Camas boys soccer coach opened one and found binders upon binders, neatly packed among old banners and VHS tapes.
They were an encyclopedic collection of meticulous notes, scouting reports and documentation of minute details of each season — from tryouts, fitness testing, offseason practice attendance to game notes — dating back to 1995.
“What the heck?” Macaya thought, “who does this?”
Macaya knew he stumbled upon a treasure trove. It was the entire documented history of Camas soccer’s heyday.
The boxes belonged to Roland Minder, his former coach, boss and now mentor, who after over 25 years coaching soccer at Camas — first as an assistant, then 23 years as the boys head coach and 15 as the girls head coach — is set to coach his last game on Saturday.
He made his plan to retire for good leading up to the fall season, leaving behind a legacy unparalleled in Clark County high school soccer. He handed off the boys team to Macaya, an assistant coach of his since 2011, last spring.
“I started looking and I’m like ‘We have to keep this somewhere,’ ” Macaya said. “I don’t think a lot of people understand that side of him.”
What’s perhaps easier to understand is what Camas has accomplished under Minder.
On the boys side, the Papermakers won 18 league titles in 19 years and three state championships (2006, 2008, 2011). The girls side has won 12 league championships (including the last nine) and two state titles (2005, 2016).
Now revered by many of his current and former players, widely respected by opposing coaches, Minder built Camas boys and girls soccer into a powerhouse.
But in 1994, he inherited a program in flux, with no reputation and little history.
“We were the doormat of Southwest Washington,” Minder said. “Everybody wanted to play us because it was going to be an easy win. And I just felt like you know, we deserve better than that. The kids are not getting what they deserve.”
Twenty-four years later, after the steady — and at times, admittedly rough — implementation of his vision, the Papermakers are the gold standard.
Laying the foundation
In spring of 1995, Minder showed up to hold his first tryouts as a head coach and was faced with a daunting scene: 67 boys turned out from Camas and Washougal (the schools co-opted a team at the time).
Just months after being tapped as the new head coach, he didn’t have any assistant coaches. Days before, the JV coach, perhaps anticipating a rough transition, stepped down.
But Minder had a plan. He just needed time.
He didn’t have highly technical players, he said, so he emphasized three factors: superior fitness (conditioning three times a week in the winter), a simple system and a change of mentality.
No longer would Camas soccer be a “doormat.” That meant running a tight ship, which drew resistance.
“I had a lot of opposition people who wanted to drive me out because they didn’t believe in my philosophy and didn’t believe that I knew what I was doing,” Minder said. “What I was doing was different.”
In the summer of 1994, Minder watched the World Cup final between Italy and Brazil end in a shootout after a 0-0 draw, and was inspired.
“I thought, from a spectator standpoint, that was the most useless use of my time,” Minder said. “There wasn’t anything interesting, nothing to cheer about, no goal chances.”
At Camas, Minder sought to implement a system that catered to fans — high-scoring, attack-oriented play.
His idea? Three forwards, instead of the traditional two.
Today, the Papermakers’ attack features a transcendent high school goal-scorer Maddie Kemp flanked by speedy wings in Jazzy Paulson and Jenna Efraimson. That’s exactly what Minder had in mind when he got his first head coaching job.
His reputation as a strict winner built up over the years, the program began to attract and produce top talent.
Brent Richards recalls being an eighth grader and seeing Minder watching one of his club games, presumably to scout the next crop of Camas talent.
“I don’t know if a coach that was there as long as he was has been as successful as long as (Minder),” said Richards, who became the Portland Timbers’ first homegrown signee in 2012. “If you’re talking about high school soccer and in Southwest Washington, he’s always going to be the name that comes up.”
Turning point
Macaya remembers going to a Camas boys soccer game with his older sisters when he was in eighth grade.
At the time, Mountain View and Evergreen were the two powers on the Clark County high school soccer scene. Camas was merely a footnote.
Macaya, who went on to play at Western Washington and Concordia, considered pursuing a boundary exception to play for Mountain View and Evergreen, where many of his club teammates were headed.
But at that game as an eighth grader, he thought, why not stick it out with all his friends from school?
“It was probably the best thing ever,” Macaya said.
At that point, Minder’s plan was in full swing. He began more local youth soccer outreach programs. He employed young ballboys. He hosted player-led youth clinics in the summers.
“Making the connections player-to-player, older to younger” was important, Minder said.
That season, 1999, Camas went onto win its first league title. Unbeknownst to Macaya — or anyone — it was a run that would go unmatched in scale.
But when Doc Harris Stadium was chosen to host the state championship games, after lobbying from local administrators, and a nudge from Minder, Camas was officially on the map statewide.
Then the Papermakers mounted its deepest run to date, and made it to the final four in 2003 — Macaya’s senior year.
Camas lost in the finals, but played on high school soccer’s biggest stage in front of a home crowd. It was the program’s audition to the local community.
Minder described a scene where the stadium was filled with raucous spectators, as were the grassy berms.
“It was big, big stuff,” Minder said. “It was first class it was absolutely first class.”
From there, the boys program was jolted onto an upward trajectory of league titles and playoffs runs that would lead to three state titles in the next seven seasons.
The girls program was just getting started, too.
“He created this expectation for the program and Camas High School, when people think of Camas soccer they think of successful, committed groups, and that’s really special,” Stanford junior goalkeeper and Camas grad Lauren Rood said. “It’s hard to step into a program and do that. And he had to build that.”
Saying goodbye
Minder takes one of many binders out of a heavy box labeled “2004-2007.”
He pulls open the binder and begins to explain what each of the hundred pages holds, and the significance.
Why is it worth the extra time? Nights when he would return home at 10 p.m. and start to watch film?
“Because I’m a pedantic Swiss,” he said with a chuckle. “To me, when I was in business, I always had a couple guiding principles. One was if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. … sometimes the data isn’t complete, or it’s misleading, then you go by gut or experience, but data can inform you and help. The more data, the better objective decisions you make.”
When he was scout master of a Boy Scout troop decades ago, “by God,” his troop was going to have the most merit badges.
It might be overkill, he says, but it’s what makes him comfortable. And how can one argue with the results?
Minder, 64, didn’t allow himself to think about retirement throughout the season. Soccer was, after all, about the students, not him. And his mind was already made up. There was no looming decision to ruminate.
So, for much of the season, it wasn’t on his mind.
He went about coaching as he had in any of the previous 24 seasons. He watched film on opponents late into the evening. He took meticulous notes. He charted the progress of his players.
And his team rolled, allowing just two goals in 4A Greater St. Helens League play as it captured its ninth consecutive league title.
But as the Papermakers advanced further into the state tournament, players noticed a change in their head coach. At times, he’d shed the gruff outer shell.
When the final whistle sounded in Camas’ 1-0 win over Jackson of Mill Creek in the first round, Minder leapt in the air with a two-handed fist-pump.
“I’ve never seen him do that before,” one player said.
“I thought he was going to get hurt,” another joked.
On Saturday afternoon, his last game coaching at Doc Harris Stadium, it finally began to sink in. He felt a “finality.”
After the season, he plans to finish out the school year teaching German and French. Then he’ll stay in Camas with his wife, Renate, and travel back to Switzerland for his annual ski trip with his childhood classmates.
But before that, he wants to go out a champion. Camas plays Central Valley of Veradale in the 4A state semifinals at 6 p.m. Friday at Puyallup’s Sparks Stadium. Win, and the title game is Saturday afternoon.
That would give him six state championships — three with the girls.
“It would be the cherry on top,” Minder said. “That’s the dream of every coach is that your last game is a championship game, there’s no denying that.”
