Jeff DiVeronica

@RocDevo

The Western New York Flash are on the brink of finalizing the sale of the team and relocating to Cary, North Carolina, according to a report.

The soccer-specific website FourFourTwo.com reported late Thursday that the reigning National Women's Soccer League champions have likely played their last match in Rochester. They're expected to play the 2017 season as North Carolina FC, the former Carolina RailHawks. Their owner, Stephen Malik, aggressively said in December he wanted to get into the NWSL within six months. The Flash would play at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary. The North Carolina franchise has announced a 1 p.m. news conference for Monday. That's when it's expected to formally reveal the purchase of the Flash.

Flash general manager Rich Randall declined comment Friday morning, saying he'd defer to ownership. Messages left for team president, Alexandra Sahlen, and her husband, Flash vice president and former head coach Aaran Lines, were not returned. Alex Sahlen's father, Joe, owns the franchise.

A team spokesman did say "nothing has been finalized," so it would be premature for the Flash to issue a statement.

Players and front-office staff for the Flash, who are based in Elma, near Buffalo, were informed on Thursday, according to local sources. The team is owned by Buffalo-based Sahlen's Packing Co. It also owns Sahlen's Sports Park in Erie County. The Flash practiced on a full-sized indoor field and other outdoor fields there and only played matches at Rochester's downtown soccer stadium, creating an unusual dual-city dynamic that never really allowed the club to gain a strong foothold locally.

"The Flash will be missed here in Rochester and we are disappointed at City Hall to learn the team has made a business decision to leave," said the City's communications director, James Smith. "The City of Rochester will continue to work with our local professional sports teams to keep our local sports and entertainment scene vibrant."

Many fans reacted with great surprise and sadness on social media. One week before the NWSL Draft and coming off a title season, the timing might seem odd. But if player contracts get transferred over to North Carolina FC, as is expected, the Sahlen's may be getting a very good sale price for a championship team.

"It's going to take a while to be able to fully process what has just happened," fans Nicole Karek and Melanie Motz, who are both 26 and live in Hamburg, near Buffalo, wrote in a Twitter post from their @WNYFlashers account. "There was no forewarning. Not even to the player (WNY) just signed (a Brazilian named, Debinha, on Thursday)."

Ironically, for a several weeks in the fall of 2015 before the Rhinos found new ownership it appeared the Flash might move their entire operation to Rochester.

The USL's Rochester Rhinos are the city-owned stadium's main tenant and have run the venue since it opened in 2006. The Flash became a tenant in 2011 and Sahlen's worked out a five-year naming rights deal. That expired after the 2015 season and a new contract couldn't be agreed upon, so the facility was simply called Rochester Rhinos Stadium last year.

Rhinos co-owner David Dworkin, who bought the USL club last January, declined comment Friday on how losing the Flash could impact the Rhinos.

City of Rochester officials approached Joe Sahlen and Randall in November 2015 about running the stadium. City records obtained by the Democrat and Chronicle detail that. That was right before it became public that the Rhinos were up for sale.

In an interview last summer, Randall said the Flash "essentially came to an agreement" with the city and it was "set to happen." The Flash were moving to Rochester full-time. But then the USL courted Dworkin as the Rhinos' owner and stadium operator, nixing the Flash plan.

The team paid rent in 2016 to play at the stadium. But from the way game-day operations were handled to the Rhinos selling tickets to Flash matches, the relationship between the two organizations has never been strong.

WNY Flash win title on penalty kicks

With titles in four different leagues, including Women's Professional Soccer in 2012 and the NWSL in 2016, the Flash own more championships than any other women's club team in the United States. With Alex Sahlen playing and Lines coaching, they started as the Buffalo Flash in 2009 and played two seasons in Buffalo, winning the USL's semi-pro W-League in 2010. Sahlen and Lines met when she was playing for the women's Rhinos and Lines the men's team in Rochester.

The big decision, before this recent development, came in 2011. The Flash decided to join the struggling WPS. They signed big names, including Brazilian star Marta and Canada's Christine Sinclair, and took a young college player named Alex Morgan as the first overall pick in the draft. Morgan, 27, now an international superstar, played as a rookie for WNY before moving on to Portland and now the Orlando Pride.

WPS enjoyed an attendance bump after the 2011 World Cup, the Flash led the league with an average attendance of 4,881 and a crowd of 10,461 watched WNY edge Philadelphia on penalty kicks for the WPS title.

But the league folded after 2011, the second failed women's pro league in the U.S. after the WUSA (2001-03). The Flash kept playing, though, in the semi-pro WPSL Elite. They won the title in that league, too, in 2012. The NWSL launched in 2013. When star forward and Pittsford native Abby Wambach and midfielder Carli Lloyd were allocated by U.S. Soccer to the Flash, the organization had high hopes for big wins and crowds.

WNY ranked third in the eight-team league, attracting 4,485 fans per match. That was less than the Sahlens hoped, but Wambach led the team in scoring and the Flash won the regular-season title and hosted the inaugural NWSL Championship. However, with a crowd of 9,129 fans watching, Morgan and the Portland Thorns beat WNY in Rochester, 2-0.

A knee injury sidelined Wambach for half of 2014 and the Flash missed the playoffs for the first time in their history. Attendance dipped to 3,177, fifth in the league. The off-season included a blockbuster trade, as Lines dealt Lloyd to Houston for a couple of veteran starters. He didn't know that a few months later, Wambach would announce she would not play for the Flash in 2015 due to injury concerns leading up to the World Cup.

Suddenly, the Flash had no drawing card. A few other veteran players also were traded, the beginning of a mass exodus. By the start of 2016, no player was left from 2014. But a youth movement started by Lines and technical director, Charlie Naimo, with the 2015 NWSL Draft worked.

Although WNY missed the playoffs again in 2015, four first-round draft picks — Abby Dahlkemper, Samantha Mewis, Lynn Williams and Jaelene Hinkle, who have now all played for the U.S. national team — led the charge toward the 2016 title.

Over the two seasons prior to the final title run, the Flash started to lose their identity and fan base and shortly after her starring performance in the 2015 World Cup, Lloyd criticized the organization for the way her trade was handled, calling WNY unprofessional. Lines resigned in December of 2015 and new head coach Paul Riley, a veteran of the WPS and USL, molded a young team into a champion.

Attendance in 2015 was an all-time low of 2,860 per match (second worst in the NWSL) and went up to 3,868 last season, fifth in the league.

The Cary area in North Carolina had a women's pro team previously. The Carolina Courage were in America's first pro league, Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA). That league lasted for three seasons, 2001-03. WPS lasted for the same amount of time (2009-11). This will be the NWSL's fifth season. It has nine other franchises and reportedly has expansion candidates, too.

JDIVERON@Gannett.com

Includes reporting by staff writer Brian Sharp.