First and foremost, a disclosure from the founder of this website, League One Updater: I’m new to USL League One.
But the joy of supporting a growing young league is that we’re all new to it. There’s no room for gatekeeping, because what gate are you going to keep? You’ve been here since 2019, and some of us have been here since 2020 or 2021? Come on now.
I’m also new to my personally supported USL League One club, a club that is not new to professional soccer, Richmond Kickers. I moved to Richmond at the end of Summer 2019. I left behind 13 years of living in or around Washington, DC. I left behind a lifetime of support for DC sports teams, including support of DC United since their founding, to move to a city with a third flight team.
Of course, I had been familiar with the Kickers for a long time. They were founded in 1993, when I was 11 years old. They were the USL Pro affiliate of DC United from 2013-2018.
Upon settling in Richmond over the Winter of 2019-2020, my plan was to make it to a match or two during the upcoming 2020 season. And we all know how the 2020 season ended up.
Then came 2021 and a glimmer of hope. Freshly vaccinated by May, I purchased an entry level club membership, a package that supports the club up front and comes with a discount on match tickets. Unfortunately, I had too much going on at home that Summer, and honestly some lingering trauma and social anxiety from the year prior with a partner working in a hospital the entire time. So I never made it to a match. But that year, ESPN+ also became a thing in my household, and had USL League One matches with no local blackouts. I got to follow along from home, keeping the interest alive another year.
By 2022, I put everything behind me. All the trauma, all the anxieties. I was ready to get out and get back to normal. I dove in head first, and bought season tickets. My first season tickets to any sport ever in my life. They were $150 for general admission, which came out to $10 a match. Even if it was terrible, I was only out $150. But…
USL League One wasn’t terrible. It was refreshingly awesome.
Almost everything about the experience was awesome. The positive experiences were more than enough to look beyond the occasional frustrations that come with supporting a lower league. The match day experience at City Stadium is wonderful. Local craft beer selections, a rotating variety of food trucks to go with concession stalwarts, a mostly general admission grandstand, a vibrant supporters group and free parking? Heck yeah. As a bonus, the club was good in 2022. Historically good. We had the three time MVP and Golden Boot winner Emiliano Terzaghi, backed by MVP runner up and league assists leader Jonathan Bolanos. We were singing the praises of Ethan Bryant’s dynamic playmaking long before his Young Player of the Year win. And we saw Coach of the Year Darren Sawatzky turn the club into something special, from top to bottom.
And as the year progressed, the crowds kept getting bigger, culminating in a sellout of the final regular season match, the largest regular season crowd in the entire league all year.
Those occasional frustrations? Not too big a deal. The mobile ticketing system was a bit clunky, and forced you to have to login twice to access your tickets. Club websites are also sometimes clunky and poorly maintained. Media coverage is limited to nonexistent, even locally.
It’s the lack of media coverage that motivated me to start this website.
As mentioned, media coverage for USL League One can be few and far between. Local coverage happens, but is not consistent. National coverage is practically nonexistent. This is often the issue with the overshadowed lower tier leagues, even in more popular sports like baseball.
I believe this is what also causes people to treat lower tier leagues as just something to do, rather than something in which to become invested. We go to minor league baseball games to watch baseball, see some future and sometimes current rehabbing stars, and to socialize, but end of the day, we don’t really connect with the team, much less the rest of the league. We go back to watching our preferred MLB team on television, and care about the World Series, even when our team isn’t playing.
I believe that soccer can be different. Baseball is long established in American culture. Compared to baseball, professional soccer is still a child. And there is still plenty of room to grow from top to bottom. We see this as new clubs and markets join the ranks of professional and semiprofessional leagues across the country every year. While some inevitably do not succeed, most have found local success. The timing is just right.
It’s easy for someone in Richmond to support the Washington Commanders or the Capitals, because their parents probably supported those teams. But DC United? They’re still a relatively young team, and support isn’t as ingrained in neighboring markets. Hence the success of the Kickers. It’s the same with markets like Omaha, Chattanooga, Raleigh, Statesboro, Fresno, Madison, Greenville, and others. And soccer is everywhere. It is the most widely played youth sport in the country. There are youth leagues in almost every locality, and they all start with the accessible parks and rec leagues. Even those youth who end up deciding soccer isn’t for them to play, the seed is planted for them to become fans of others who continue. It’s time to harvest.
League One Updater went live on October 18th, 2022, at the tail end of the 2022 USL League One season. I bought the domain, started with a free WordPress template and host it on webspace I already own. I had it up and running within a day, and continue to make improvements. I created an Instagram account and even signed back up for Twitter. This is just the start.
Goals for League One Updater
As we move forward into the 2023 season, I plan to do the following here:
- Maintain and improve the reference sections where USL League One fans and potential fans can find information, trivia and coverage of all of the USL League One clubs and stadiums (current and future), and find historic (as of 2022) and ongoing updates on attendance figures.
- Keep up with USL League One news – both at the league and team levels, with an editorial focus on supporting the continued growth of the league.
- Track local and national media coverage with a goal of promoting and encouraging continued coverage.
- Maintain editorial independence so we can still report on any negative stories in an unbiased manner.
- Improve social media reach via Twitter, Instagram and Reddit.
- Branch out and personally visit at least two stadiums outside of my own market each season.
- Solicit and publish independent dispatches and content contributions from all USL League One markets.
- Continuously improve the user experience on the site.
It’s an exciting time to be a fan of US Soccer
We’re back in the World Cup. MLS is seeing record support. USL Championship, MLS Next Pro, USL League One, USL League Two, USL-W, National Women’s Soccer League, NISA and others are all finding success in local markets. Young generations of soccer fans are coming of age who have never known a United States without a top flight soccer league. These aren’t the older, Eurosnob fans who have to be pried away from European leagues. These are fans who have always supported US teams.
It’s time to shine and grow. Thanks for joining us.