| Full name | Rochester Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 1981 | |
| Dissolved | 1984 | |
| Stadium | Holleder Memorial Stadium | |
| Capacity | 20,000 | |
| Owner | Eugene Quatro, Jr., et al. | |
| Head Coach | Joe Horvath | |
| League | American Soccer League (1981–1982) United Soccer League (1984) | |
The Rochester Flash was an American soccer club based in Rochester, New York, that was a member of the American Soccer League from 1981-82 and of the United Soccer League in 1984.
Rochester had been the home of professional soccer for many years before the founding of the Flash. The town's first professional team was the Rochester Lancers, who joined the lower-level American Soccer League in 1967. The club moved up to the top level North American Soccer League in 1970, and they captured their only league championship that same year. By the mid to late 1970s, large market NASL teams had started offering big contracts to aging foreign superstars, seeking the kind of attention and success generated by the New York Cosmos signing of Pelé in 1974. Though the Lancers did occasionally benefit from this at the box office, drawing larger than usual crowds when a big name like Franz Beckenbauer or Johan Cruyff would come to town with the visiting opponent, they could not keep up with the rest of the league economically or on the field. The club folded after the 1980 season. [1]
The Rochester Flash were formed as an expansion team in the American Soccer League for 1981. Hoping to capitalize on the city's existing base of soccer fans while operating on a more modest budget, the team planned to play at the same home field, Holleder Stadium, that the Lancers had called home. They also brought back three former Lancers players: Craig Reynolds, Nelson Cupello, and Dennis Mepham. [2] [3]
The 1981 Flash was led by coach Don Lalka and put together a roster that featured several players moonlighting from the Major Indoor Soccer League's Buffalo Stallions in addition to the three holdovers from the Lancers. At their home debut, a promising crowd of about 5,000 turned out, but those numbers would taper off as the season went along. Rochester was almost unbeatable at home, losing only once at Holleder Stadium, but they struggled to win away from home, losing eleven out of fourteen road games. They would finish with an 11-5-12 record. The Flash qualified for the playoffs but had to go on the road for the one game play-in round, where they were eliminated 2-0 by the eventual league champion Carolina Lightnin'. Stallions crossover Mike Laschev led the team in scoring, with thirteen goals. [3] [4]
In 1982, the club brought in several new players, including Franco Paonessa, who would go on to win ASL Rookie of the Year honors. This infusion of young talent did not improve their fortunes as a team, though, and they still finished in the middle of the ASL standings with a record of 10-2-15. The seven-team league allowed six teams to participate in the playoffs, so the Flash did play in the postseason despite their losing record, where the Carolina Lightnin' once again knocked the Flash out down in Charlotte. Ernie Buriano led the team in scoring with nine goals and six assists. [3] [5]
Following the 1982 season, the team was facing the same challenge as virtually every other team in the ASL: revenues were not keeping up with expenses. Rochester chose to go "dormant" for the 1983 season to try to improve its financial situation. This was a status that most ASL clubs who chose it never came back from, but the Flash would defy the odds and announced their intention to field a team again in 1984. However, the ASL was collapsing that winter after a long period of instability and decline, and the Flash would have to pivot to mount their comeback with a new organization, the United Soccer League. [3]
The USL was created in early 1984 by the owners of the ASL's Jacksonville Tea Men and Dallas Americans as a more stable and financially sound alternative to the slowly dying league. By February, the six teams that had been active in the ASL in 1983 had either announced plans to move over to the new league, gone dormant, or folded. The Flash management saw that their best option for playing that year would be to follow the defectors over to the new USL. The ASL ended operations shortly afterwards. [6]
The USL prepared to kick off its 1984 season in May with nine teams in three regional divisions. League rules aimed to control costs with a strict salary cap and an imbalanced schedule in which teams would play half of their 24-game schedule against the other teams in their division, keeping travel costs minimal. [7] The Flash were members of the Northern Division along with two brand new clubs, the Buffalo Storm and New York Nationals.
When it came time to put a roster together for the resurrected Flash, the team was deprived of its main talent pool in 1981 and 1982 when players from the MISL's Buffalo Stallions who were looking for a summer paycheck chose the convenience of staying in Buffalo and playing for the Storm rather than commuting to Rochester. Unlike most of the USL, the Flash also did not tap into a pool of available players with NASL experience who found themselves squeezed out of the shrinking first division league (the NASL had contracted from twenty-four teams in 1980 to nine in 1984). [8] With the exception of player-coach Joe Horvath and Don Tobin, most of the Flash's 1984 roster had limited ASL experience if any at all. [2] The relatively inexperienced Flash had a hard time keeping pace with the rest of the league. They lost their first five games [9] on their way to a final record of 7-17. This put them at the bottom of both their division and the league, and they did not qualify for postseason play. [8]
Following the season, most of the USL teams were faced with the reality that, despite all of the measures the league had taken to keep costs down, they were still losing money. At the league's founding, there were talks of an indoor season in the winter to promote year-round play and connection to communities. This never materialized, and several of the teams failed to post a performance bond for the 1985 USL season (including all three of the Northern Division teams). After discussions about merging the USL and NASL to shore up the finances of the USL teams and keep the NASL from shrinking to the point of collapse ended without an agreement in early March, the NASL cancelled its 1985 season and the Flash was one of five USL clubs that folded while the Houston Dynamos left the league to become independent. Four clubs would try to stage a 1985 USL season, but the league would only complete six weeks of play before they were bankrupt and forced to close down. [6] [10] The city would have to wait until the 1996 debut of the second division A-League's Raging Rhinos to have a professional soccer team to support again. [11]
| Year | Division | League | Reg. Season | Playoffs | U.S. Open Cup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1981 | 2 | ASL | 3rd, Freedom | 1st Round | did not enter |
| 1982 | 2 | ASL | 5th | 1st Round | did not enter |
| 1983 | 2 | ASL | On hiatus | ||
| 1984 | N/A | USL | 3rd, Northern | did not qualify | did not enter |
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