The Rochester Flash soccer club – great moniker for a company town like Rochester where Kodak cameras & film was the key employer of the era. The Flash were a lower division club formed in 1981 to fill the void left by the departed Rochester Lancers (1967-1980). The club played in 1981 and 1982, sat out 1983 entirely and then returned for one final campaign in 1984.
Jacksonville’s first professional soccer team was the oddly named “Tea Men”. The Teas arrived in 1981, starting out in the top flight North American Soccer League and the 80,000-seat Gator Bowl before gradually self-relegating to cheaper, lower division leagues and minor league baseball’s Wolfson Park by their final season in 1984. The strange moniker carried over from the team’s previous home in New England (Boston), where the Tea Men name had a double meaning, referring both to the Boston Tea Party protest of 1773 and the team’s original corporate owner, the Lipton Tea Company. The Teas were champions of the American Soccer League in 1983.
The New York Nationals were a very short-lived Long Island-based entry in the lower division United Soccer League. The club existed for only one season in the summer of 1984. The Nationals set up shop at Hofstra University on Long Island, which was previously home to the early (pre-Pele) days of the NASL’s New York Cosmos in the early 1970’s and to the American Soccer League’s New York Apollo in the late 1970’s.
The Fort Lauderdale Sun were an oddball pro soccer entry during the dark years of the mid-1980’s for the outdoor game in the United States. The team formed in February 1984 to replaced the recently departed Fort Lauderdale Strikers of the NASL at Lockhart Stadium. The Sun played in the newly formed United Soccer League (USL) and won the league championship in their 1984 debut season, despite the team’s owner getting indicted midway through the season in a marijuana smuggling conspiracy. The United Soccer League disbanded partway into its sophomore campaign in June 1985, bringing about the end of the Sun.
Yesterday The Houston Chronicle published photos of the nearly complete $95 million BBVA Compass Stadium in downtown Houston. BBVA opens on May 12th when its
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