FC Cincinnati held a press conference at their 4th street office on Wednesday to promote two pieces of interesting news.

Queen City Cup Challenge

First, Mayor Cranley introduced the Queen City Cup Challenge which is a friendly competition between the cities of Charlotte, North Carolina and Cincinnati that will be played out between its USL Soccer teams.

FC Cincinnati will face the Charlotte Independence twice during the regular season, once at home on April 9th and once in Charlotte on May 21st. The team that accumulates the most points over these two games (standard 3-1-0 win-loss-draw scoring) will claim the prize of Queen City Cup. If tied after two games, tiebreakers will be total goals scored then away goals.

Mayor Cranley also made a friendly wager with the mayor of Charlotte, Jennifer Roberts. The losing city’s mayor will travel to the winning city to participate in a charity event serving lunch at a homeless shelter wearing the opposing teams jersey. You may recall that Mayor Cranley made a similar wager with Pittsburgh’s mayor during the Bengals playoff run.

Why a rivalry with Charlotte you ask?

Charlotte, North Carolina also calls itself the Queen City.

Charlotte took on the nickname of “Queen City” when the city’s resident Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was married to King George III of England a year before the city’s founding.

Cincinnati was nicknamed the “Queen City” following rapid and expansive growth in the forty years following its founding. Its fame as the largest “Western” city in the mid 1800’s inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to reference it as the “Queen of the West” in his poem Catawba Wine in 1854.

“And this Song of the Vine, This greeting of mine, The winds and the birds shall deliver, To the Queen of the West, In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River.”

This concludes today’s history lesson.

Youth Soccer Community Days

The second piece of news involves a new charitable partnership between FC Cincinnati and two local businesses, the Oswald Company and AssureCare.

Oswald Company and AssureCare are sponsoring a promotion called Youth Soccer Community Days. Through this promotion, any youth soccer player in the greater Cincinnati wearing their youth soccer jersey to the match on April 9th or April 16th will be able to purchase a ticket for the price of only $1.

CEO’s Ken Oswald and Dr. Yousuf Ahmad (AssureCare) attended the press conference and expressed their excitement about the new soccer franchise, the promotion and stressed the impact the game has had on their families lives.

Oswald Company is a local company that offers commercial design-build and construction management services. AssureCare offers healthcare management software solutions through MedCompass and its other products.

While the team prepares for its first match against Charleston this Saturday at 7:30pm, the front office continues its work to promote the club, reach out to the community, and fill the stadium for the home opener.

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2016 USL Eastern Conference Preview – Part 5

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