The Chattanooga Football Club’s second season began with a bang, a 2-1 exhibition win over the under-23 team from Fútbol Club Atlas of Guadalajara, Mexico — in front of an announced crowd of 6,317.
The season ended last Saturday in the National Premier Soccer League championship game in Madison, Ala., where Chattanooga FC fell 3-1 to the Sacramento Gold.
“It’s been amazing,” goalkeeper Richard Masters said of the season. “It’s a great feeling to almost win the whole tournament. We were just happy to win the conference. It’s a stage higher than we did last season, so next season hopefully we’ll win it.”
Chattanooga FC’s board will meet later this month to discuss next season and analyze ways to improve on a product that has proven very popular.
The season-opening crowd was the second-largest ever to see a soccer game at Finley Stadium, which opened in 1997. Many of those fans returned again and again as Chattanooga FC averaged more than 4,000 fans in its five home games.
“Learning from our first year helped us improve exponentially for the second year,” general manager Sean McDaniel said. “We were better organized on every level: volunteers, food, operations with the stadium, with the team.”
Through two seasons of play, CFC has exceeded every possible expectation, both on the field and off. The team has an overall record of 11-4-3 in NPSL play, won the Southeast Conference this season and doubled its average attendance from the first season to the second. It also brought in Volkswagen as its title sponsor, which led to an exhibition game with D.C. United’s under-20 squad in Washington.
“It’s the model that we would love to re-create across the country,” NPSL commissioner Dan Trainor said Monday.
The announced attendance at the championship game was 1,080, and most of the folks in the stands — at least 60 percent — were CFC supporters. Trainor said the atmosphere at the title game and the overall attendance for the Final Four was the best in the six-year history of the league.
“It’s hard to beat the Chattanooga fans,” he said. “They come in, they dance, they chant, they wave the flags; and that really helped a lot with the atmosphere.”
Chattanooga wants to host a Final Four as soon as possible, but it will be at least a few years before it will have a shot. The league tries to rotate the event among the four conferences, and it was the West’s turn in 2011. However, because no West team wanted to host, the Huntsville satellite city offered to do it again and the league accepted, Trainor said.
The next opportunity for Chattanooga to host the Final Four, assuming teams in other regions want to host in 2012 and ’13, is in 2014.
John Frierson is in his fifth year at the Times Free Press and fifth year covering University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletics. The bulk of his time is spent covering Mocs football, but he also writes about women’s basketball and the big-picture issues and news involving the athletic department. A native of Athens, Ga., John grew up a few hundred yards from the University of Georgia campus. Instead of becoming a Bulldog he attended Ole ...
Or login with:
New Account