













By Ashley Scoby

KyForward columnist



There’s an old joke that soccer fans use to explain away the inevitable morning beers they’ll consume:



If you’re sitting in a bar at 10 a.m. with a drink in your hand, you might be an alcoholic. But if you’re sitting in a bar at 10 a.m. with a drink in your hand, and there’s a soccer game on TV, you’re just a soccer fan.



Quite literally out of nowhere, there are more and more people who can relate to that scenario in Louisville – the largest city in a basketball-crazed state, but a one that finds itself with a brand new professional soccer team, with the Louisville City FC.



Both the genesis of the team itself, as well as the symbol of a growing soccer interest within the city, can be found in bars throughout the city. Because, after all, this is soccer. And Louisville is suddenly a fledgling soccer city.



The Coopers



Sitting at a Whiskey Row bourbon bar in downtown Louisville, a diverse group of soccer fans describe how they essentially created the pro soccer movement in the city. They’re modest about their involvement, but the truth stands: Without this supporters group, now known as the Coopers, City FC might not exist.



The Coopers normally have their business meetings at Molly Malone’s on Baxter Avenue, but they’ve come to Sidebar at Whiskey Row to talk about the beginning.



It’s a ragtag crew: There’s the lawyer. The IT guy who played high school football and used to think soccer was for “wussies.” The Irishman who moved stateside.



All of them are bonded by the love of the game, though, and a love for Louisville.



It started on Facebook: A “MLS to Louisville” page had materialized, and that’s where several of these guys congregated. The goal was to bring a full-fledged MLS team to Louisville. Then Wayne Estopinal, a local architect, saw the page and suggested the group would be better suited to pursue a lower-level franchise.



Estopinal happened to be a partial owner of MLS’ Orlando City SC, and had been looking to potentially move Orlando’s minor league team.



“I didn’t want to dampen the dream,” Estopinal said. “I just wanted to shine a brighter light on it and let them see what this really is.”



“This” became Orlando’s USL affiliate (think: minor league affiliate) setting up shop in Louisville. A mayor’s initiative was signed that allocated about half a million dollars to renovate Slugger Field – the home of the Louisville Bats, and where City FC will play its home matches, beginning March 28.



Louisville City FC website



That money, plus additional funds contributed by the club itself, will pay for renovated locker rooms, a retractable pitcher’s mound, storage for the artificial turf used for soccer games and the stadium’s City FC branding.



Once it became pretty set in stone that a team was going to happen, the issue became transferring those first flames of excitement into an actual supporters culture: “As much preparation as we put into it, it’s one of those things that has to develop organically when the games are played,” said Taylor Sorrels, one of the founding members of the Coopers.



The supporters’ club is so named because the people who make bourbon barrels are called “coopers.” Coopers may not make the alcohol itself, but they’re the ones who give the Kentucky product its actual flavor.



“That’s kind of how we saw ourselves,” Sorrels said.



This spring, the soccer version of the Coopers will get the chance to instill their own flavor into a brand-new soccer team. On June 4, 2014, the announcement was made: Pro soccer was coming to Louisville. And on March 28, the team will play its first home match against St. Louis FC.



“That was one of the happiest moments of my life,” said Coopers secretary Augustus Waiters. “So much work and so much belief had finally materialized into something.”



‘The millennials’



According to Estopinal, City FC’s inception is about more than just soccer. It’s about Louisville.



“What every community does is try to make their community attractive to young people, educated people, people that will help businesses grow here,” he said. “This is nothing different. This is really a sport of millennials. They all grew up playing it. Many of them are now fans of it at the professional level.”



And City FC will provide the kind of cheap entertainment millennials can appreciate. Single-game tickets cost about the same as ordering a pizza, and some season-ticket packages come for as little as $180.



Estopinal harkens back to the night in December of 2010 when the University of Louisville men’s soccer team played UCLA in the playoffs, siting that match as a “milestone” for soccer culture in the city. Louisville’s program had been on the rise before but on this night, in the snow, Estopinal remembers seeing 8,000 fans pour into the stadium.



The Cardinals won 5-4 and advanced to the program’s first-ever College Cup.



“U of L has already showed that Louisville can be a soccer town,” he said. “Can we take it to another level? I think we can.”



The people involved with City FC hope to climb the ladder one day into full-fledged MLS team, but even the possibility of that is years away. According to Estopinal, to even be considered for an expansion franchise, Louisville has to prove three things: the overall marketplace, the competitiveness of the team, and a solid stadium deal.



Much of that will depend, quite simply, on how many people show up, and how consistently. To do well financially, Estopinal says, the team needs about 4,000 fans per home game. But to grab the attention of the MLS, according to Estopinal, City FC needs 8 to 9,000 at every home match.



It’s a steep hope for a fledgling team. But a growing interest in soccer not only in the city, but nationwide, could pay dividends.



Molly Malone’s – where the Coopers hold their meetings – is one example: According to Waiters, the bar used to be practically empty on Saturday mornings, when English Premier League games are televised.



But now?



“Now the bars will actually pay to open the building early for soccer matches,” Waiters said. “That’s when I knew things had changed.”



Molly Malone’s isn’t the only one: Saints, in the St. Matthews area, is usually where Martin French goes to watch the Saturday morning slate of games, for example. French is originally from Ireland, and knows what soccer passion looks like.



When he first moved to the states, he was shocked at how little people cared about soccer:



“I lived in New Orleans in 2010 just before the World Cup,” he said. “Coming from Europe, you’re used to, ‘It’s the freaking World Cup!’ You come here and switch on ESPN, a 24-hour sports channel, and it’s like, ‘LeBron James seen leaving a toilet at the airport.’ … But it’s so different now than in 2010. People care.”



To the Coopers, getting more people to care about soccer is key. But again, City FC isn’t just about the sport: It’s about the city.



“It’s about notoriety. It’s about Louisville challenging itself to be something bigger than it is,” said Coopers member Timothy Clark. “I’m having my first kid right now, and I want to be able to say, ‘This is what we built and left for you.’”



‘The alternative sport’



“Pro soccer, pro city” is the slogan that City FC has based its season ticket campaign on. It’s also what the club believes can be the start of something bigger: If Louisville can prove that it can support a professional soccer team (enthusiastically), then it could be considered a much more viable option for other pro sports.



It’s no secret there’s a movement to bring the NBA to Louisville. But within a state that is the hub of college basketball, the city has to prove it can sustain support for professional teams.



The list of professional sports teams that have folded in Louisville is extensive: the Louisville Colonels and Louisville Brecks, teams from the 1920s National Football League; the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association that later weren’t included in the NBA-ABA merger, and that folded again in the mid-2000s; the Louisville Fire (arena football, folded); the Louisville Colonels of the American Association (baseball, folded).



Nothing has ever really stuck, except minor league teams like the Louisville Bats.



But if ever there were a time to change the troubled history of professional sports in Louisville, now would be it. Both the NBA and MLS could expand in the next decade. Louisville as a city is growing both in population and in diversity.



Soccer is the growing dark horse of a sport in the U.S., and one that could prove Louisville’s viability in the pro sports market.



“I think soccer is kind of the alternative sport,” Estopinal said. “If we ever get the NBA here, I’ll probably buy season tickets. I like basketball too. But I think if Louisville is still looking for a route to have a major league sport, soccer offers a really good opportunity because it’s still an emerging sport.”



The logistics of the team certainly don’t hurt its cause: Tickets are cheap, at least compared to, say, season tickets to UK or U of L men’s basketball, or tickets to any of the three major professional sports. Not to mention matches will be at Slugger Field, right in the heart of downtown Louisville.



“It’s a lot easier to come to a game that’s downtown around everything than drive all the way to Broadbent Arena for indoor football or ice hockey or something, because there’s nothing else around,” said Jason Ence, who does PR for the Coopers. “Not only are you going to get people to come down, but you’re going to get the people who are already down here saying, ‘Hey, there’s a game – let’s head over.’”



That’s where the bars come into play: People already in the Whiskey Row area – about two blocks from Slugger – can walk between the two easily.



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Said Sorrels: “All the Whiskey Row joints are going to be huge into soccer by the end of the year. … If you give people a real reason to flock en masse to this area, they’re going to remember it.”



The Coopers have talked of recreating something like what Seattle Sounders fans do before games: A march from the Pioneer Square area of Seattle to CenturyLink Field has become something the fanbase is known for, and it’s something that could potentially be done in a similar fashion in Louisville.



Like the Coopers said, it takes a while to build that kind of passion among its supporters. But they also say that this team is a chance for all Kentuckians to throw their support behind one team that wears neither blue nor red. That come-together philosophy in itself can be the genesis of a soccer culture.



“We don’t care who you are. This is your team,” Waiters said. “It’s Louisville’s team. It’s the state’s team. Soccer isn’t just for spoiled rich kids, it’s not just for the soccer moms with 10 kids in a van. It’s a game that’s played on streets and on the corners of vacant lots. It’s for everyone.”



Ashley Scoby is a senior journalism major at the University of Kentucky and a KyForward sports writer. She has reported on the Wildcats for wildcathoops.com, vaughtsviews.com andkysportsreport.com as well as for newspapers in Danville and Glasgow. She will begin a summer internship with Sports Illustrated magazine in New York this June.