Volkswagen was coming to town to build a massive facility. CFC knew that Volkswagen has a history of supporting soccer, and they’re a fantastic partner anyway. Well, Volkswagen wasn’t going to support a little club just starting out, so CFC got the next best thing, the local VW dealer. “The first year, we just did it. He gave us $500. I don’t know if he ever even wrote the check. We just kind of put it on there,” explains Kelly. They did, however, eventually get the legit sponsorship, which would lead to a partnership with German first division side, VfL Wolfsburg.

Another thing they said had a huge impact was the fact that they weren’t all about soccer. Obviously, they love the game. They started a club after all. But that does not mean everyone else is just as passionate about the game. “If we came out and said ‘Soccer soccer soccer soccer’ then there would have been a lot of yawns. We have more people show up, even to this day, who are more passionate about Chattanooga than they are about soccer,” says Grizzle, “Tapping into that localism spirit is really important.”

“You can’t be about one person trying to make a buck,” adds Kelly, “One of the cancers of US soccer is the idea that you have to have one owner who controls the whole thing and is trying to leverage it into the New York Jets.” The club has spent almost eleven years now putting an emphasis on the community and working to make the club work instead of making a dollar. “We’ve literally reinvested almost every dime back into the club over the years,’ says Grizzle, “I think at most the ownership has taken maybe a couple thousand dollars distribution check. And we even distribute an equal amount to the Foundation. On average, we earn about $200 a year.”

The team has also had a fantastic impact through their work with their foundation and with their academies (I’ll get into some of that in a future installment of this), but they’ve also made waves across the NPSL. A lot of the NPSL’s Southeastern division has Chattanooga’s thumbprint in it. Three teams currently in the division (Inter Nashville FC, Greenville FC, and Asheville City SC) all got help starting up from Chattanooga. Tim Kelly joked that “We made life harder for ourselves. It used to be a lot easier to make it to the National Championship.”