Hansen's Sunday Notebook: FC Tucson could be promoted to United Soccer League soon
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
When soccer website “Outside the Touch Lines” ranked FC Tucson No. 1 of all 67 PDL teams last week, the ambitious, get-things-done leadership of Tucson’s soccer organization didn’t go into an “aw shucks” mode.
Their vision of professional soccer in Tucson goes beyond the Premier Development League. It seems inevitable that FC Tucson will soon, perhaps by 2018, advance to the United Soccer League, and become an affiliate of a Major League Soccer team.
It would be the equivalent of a Class AAA Pacific Coast League baseball team in Tucson.
“We’re getting the pick of the litter nationally for our PDL team,” FC Tucson managing partner Greg Foster said last week, citing, among others, Jon Bakero, a former ACC Player of the Week at Wake Forest, and other top college players from Louisville, Creighton, Santa Clara and San Diego State.
“We believe the time is right for the Tucson market to move up to the USL.”
FC Tucson’s management group, which includes Foster, GM Jon Pearlman and coach Rick Schantz, is in the process of forming a steering committee to identify investors for a move to the USL. That would require more than double their current budget and become something close to a $5 million a year operation.
“We have a huge head start because our venue, Kino Stadium, is already in place,” said Foster. Best case: If FC Tucson joins the 29-team USL and gains a MLS affiliation, the stadium could be expanded to perhaps 4,000 to 6,000 seats.
The difference between the PDL and USL is significant.
PDL teams play seven home games; USL teams play 15.
PDL teams in FC Tucson’s Southwest Division play at high school and junior college facilities. USL teams, such as FC Cincinnati, which plays at Nippert Stadium, has drawn as many as 23,375 fans this season. The USL Western Conference includes such teams as LA Galaxy II, Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2, Saint Louis FC, OKC Energy FC, Real Monarchs of Salt Lake City and San Antonio FC.
It makes sense: Tucson has been a high school soccer powerhouse for 20 years; the youth soccer organizations number more than 10,000 players; the first-class Tucson Soccer Academy is among the best of its kind anywhere; Pima College is a long-time NJCAA contender in men’s and women’s soccer; and the UA’s women’s soccer program has become a Pac-12 contender, reaching the Sweet 16 last season.
Playing in the USL would expand FC Tucson’s regular-season schedule to April through September (the PDL season is May to mid-July).
“We’ve been running our PDL team like a USL team,” said Foster. “We believe we can significantly increase our footprint.”
FC Tucson, for example, leases the former Arizona Diamondbacks training facilities at Kino Stadium. It has a weight room, therapy pools and most of the modern athletic training gear.
The FC Tucson group, which initiated and stages MLS preseason training in Tucson, would then be on stage from January to October each year.
“A USL team often has as many as four or five MLS players at a given time,” said Foster. “If we get a wholly owned affiliation, it would be a merger of our brand with an MLS franchise.”
With the recent addition of the American Hockey League’s Tucson Roadrunners and the implementation of the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl to this city’s sports landscape, a move by FC Tucson to the USL would be a trifecta to match any in Tucson sports history.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Arizona football coach Rich Rodriguez and his staff boarded private jets last week to begin a 17-city recruiting journey unlike any in UA history. The working title for this endeavor is “satellite camps,” and it is the new way an isolated school such as Arizona can connect and evaluate with potential football recruits. RichRod and his assistants, in various combinations, will visit nine California cities, two in Utah, Florida and Ohio, and one each in Hawaii and Texas over a 10-day period.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
The Wildcats have 17 early commitments in the class of 2017, but it’s not an eye-opening group. Most are two- and three-star prospects. That’s been typical of Arizona football for 50 years. The difference is that RichRod’s approach — with three new assistants and an additional recruiting coordinator — is more aggressive and wide-ranging than at any time in school history. It is a change in the culture of college football recruiting. When RichRod fired long-time defensive assistants Jeff Casteel, Bill Kirelawich and Dave Lockwood in December, it was a manifestation of recruiting ability rivaling coaching ability in modern college football.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Every time I see a Twitter message from a UA-related football recruit that says “I’m blessed to say I have received an offer from Arizona; it is my sixth (or 14th or 21st) offer,” I shake my head and thank the Lord I did not go into the football recruiting business. The day-to-day uncertainty is overwhelming.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
When UA basketball coach Sean Miller resumes his recruiting/evaluation work in July, two of his leading targets will be Philadelphia point guard Quade Green and Las Vegas forward Charles O’Bannon Jr. Getting Green away from Kentucky and Villanova would be a major coup. Getting O’Bannon away from his father’s alma mater, UCLA, might be even more difficult. Now that Miller must replace about half of his roster each year, the $2.1 million retention bonus he is to be paid this summer figures out to about a dollar for every time someone in Tucson worries that the transient nature of college basketball will be the ruin of Miller’s program.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
In my series listing the 100 best days in Tucson sports history, I goofed by not including former Tucson Parks and Recreation Director Jim Ronstadt in the 1992 acquisition of the Colorado Rockies. It was Ronstadt’s work with Coors Brewing Co. executive Swede Johnson, a former UA vice president, that set the foundation for Tucson’s successful pursuit of the Rockies, who held spring training at Hi Corbett Field for 18 years.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
At the sobering funeral for ex-UA basketball standout Sean Rooks last week, about a dozen former teammates gathered to celebrate his life. “Wookie” would’ve been proud to know that Sean Elliott, Jud Buechler, Joe Turner, Matt Muehlebach, Harvey Mason and Reggie Geary, among others, traveled to Los Angeles for the service.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Tucson athlete of the week: Salpointe High grad Alyssa Thompson finished 14th in the NCAA heptathlon last week in Oregon. With a year remaining at Arizona, she projects as the Pac-12 champion (she was second this year) and someone who can score close to 6,000 points and challenge Georgia sophomore Kendell Williams, who will be the NCAA’s top returning heptathlete.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Sahuaro grad Winston Welch had a notable sophomore season at New Mexico Military Institute this season. An outfielder, Welch hit .373 with 17 home runs and 65 RBIs in an all-conference season. He was good enough to earn and accept a scholarship to play next year at Arkansas State.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
One of the first things Luke Walton is expected to announce after Sunday’s NBA championship game, is the hiring of Salpointe and UA grad Jesse Mermuys to his Los Angeles Lakers coaching staff. Mermuys, who was a video coordinator under Lute Olson at Arizona, was the head coach of the Toronto Raptors NBA D-League team last season, and also head coach of the Raptors’ Summer League teams in 2015.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
The memorial service for ex-UA offensive lineman Pulu Poumele last week in Ocean-side, California, drew many of Poumele’s Desert Swarm-era teammates, including quarterbacks George Malauulu and Dan White, linemen Mani Ott, Tevete Usu and Joe Smigiel and Pueblo High football coach Brandon Sanders. Poumele, who collapsed and died while playing basketball, is survived by his wife and four children.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
When Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley retired last week, it ignited talk that Greg Byrne will be on the short list of Gators replacements. Big surprise, huh? Both of Foley’s top associate ADs have been listed as possible replacements for the last five years, but I strongly suspect that if Florida doesn’t hire someone with Gator blood, they’ll give Byrne or Kansas State AD John Currie an offer they can’t refuse. In the ’90s, Foley hired UA women’s golf coach Kim Haddow, UA softball assistant coach Larry Ray and baseball coach Andy Lopez over the years. He fired all three, exhibiting one of the quickest trigger fingers of any college AD.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Sahuaro grad Cesar Salazar is the fifth catcher from Tucson to help Arizona to an NCAA Tournament in the last 40 years. Tucson’s Ron Hassey was the catcher for Arizona’s 1976 World Series championship team, Tucson’s Willie Morales led the Wildcats to the regional title game in 1993, and CDO’s Dennis Anderson was a standout when Jerry Stitt’s 1999 team reached the tournament. When Arizona won the 1986 World Series, Sabino grad Steve Strong was a .400-hitting catcher. Strong is in Omaha this weekend to watch his alma mater. His twin daughters, who are Salpointe grads, attend TCU. One of them dates TCU starting outfielder Josh Watson. Strong was teammates on the ’86 UA team with Diamondbacks manager Chip Hale, whose daughter, Sabrina, plans to enroll at TCU in August.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
New UA women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes will hold her first camp/clinic at McKale Center on June 27-30, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Of those Barnes has enlisted to help is ex-Tucson High and Harvard standout Christine Clark, who completed her second season of pro basketball in Italy but does not plan to return to the EuroLeague. Camp info: 520-621-0915.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Tucson High junior-to-be George Arias Jr., whose father, George, was a Pueblo, Pima College and UA third baseman of note, has committed to pitch for Jay Johnson at Arizona. Arias, a right-hander, is believed to be the only pitcher in Arizona history to start state championship games as a freshman and sophomore. He will enter the 2017 prep season as the top prospect in Tucson.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
The USA Olympic Swimming Trials begin next Sunday in Omaha, Nebraska, across the street from the College World Series’ TD Ameritrade Park.
Unlike 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012, when more than 45 Tucson-connected swimmers were involved, this year’s list, 32, is not as impressive. The drop is a reflection on the move of Frank Busch from UA coach to director of USA Swimming’s national teams.
There are four strong Rio contenders from Tucson: Matt Grevers (freestyle and backstroke), Kevin Cordes (breaststroke), Caitlin Leverenz (IM specialist) and UA grad Margo Geer (freestyle relay).
The most compelling story is Flowing Wells and UA grad Marcus Titus, who is ranked No. 6 in the 100 breast stroke. The top two in each event will be on Team USA to Rio.
Three former UA All-Americans — Darian Townsend, Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or and Adam Ritter — are making comebacks and will swim in Omaha.
Getting to Rio, however, might be something only Grevers, Cordes and Leverenz can reasonably accomplish.
- Greg Hansen
When soccer website “Outside the Touch Lines” ranked FC Tucson No. 1 of all 67 PDL teams last week, the ambitious, get-things-done leadership of Tucson’s soccer organization didn’t go into an “aw shucks” mode.
Their vision of professional soccer in Tucson goes beyond the Premier Development League. It seems inevitable that FC Tucson will soon, perhaps by 2018, advance to the United Soccer League, and become an affiliate of a Major League Soccer team.
It would be the equivalent of a Class AAA Pacific Coast League baseball team in Tucson.
“We’re getting the pick of the litter nationally for our PDL team,” FC Tucson managing partner Greg Foster said last week, citing, among others, Jon Bakero, a former ACC Player of the Week at Wake Forest, and other top college players from Louisville, Creighton, Santa Clara and San Diego State.
“We believe the time is right for the Tucson market to move up to the USL.”
FC Tucson’s management group, which includes Foster, GM Jon Pearlman and coach Rick Schantz, is in the process of forming a steering committee to identify investors for a move to the USL. That would require more than double their current budget and become something close to a $5 million a year operation.
“We have a huge head start because our venue, Kino Stadium, is already in place,” said Foster. Best case: If FC Tucson joins the 29-team USL and gains a MLS affiliation, the stadium could be expanded to perhaps 4,000 to 6,000 seats.
The difference between the PDL and USL is significant.
PDL teams play seven home games; USL teams play 15.
PDL teams in FC Tucson’s Southwest Division play at high school and junior college facilities. USL teams, such as FC Cincinnati, which plays at Nippert Stadium, has drawn as many as 23,375 fans this season. The USL Western Conference includes such teams as LA Galaxy II, Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2, Saint Louis FC, OKC Energy FC, Real Monarchs of Salt Lake City and San Antonio FC.
It makes sense: Tucson has been a high school soccer powerhouse for 20 years; the youth soccer organizations number more than 10,000 players; the first-class Tucson Soccer Academy is among the best of its kind anywhere; Pima College is a long-time NJCAA contender in men’s and women’s soccer; and the UA’s women’s soccer program has become a Pac-12 contender, reaching the Sweet 16 last season.
Playing in the USL would expand FC Tucson’s regular-season schedule to April through September (the PDL season is May to mid-July).
“We’ve been running our PDL team like a USL team,” said Foster. “We believe we can significantly increase our footprint.”
FC Tucson, for example, leases the former Arizona Diamondbacks training facilities at Kino Stadium. It has a weight room, therapy pools and most of the modern athletic training gear.
The FC Tucson group, which initiated and stages MLS preseason training in Tucson, would then be on stage from January to October each year.
“A USL team often has as many as four or five MLS players at a given time,” said Foster. “If we get a wholly owned affiliation, it would be a merger of our brand with an MLS franchise.”
With the recent addition of the American Hockey League’s Tucson Roadrunners and the implementation of the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl to this city’s sports landscape, a move by FC Tucson to the USL would be a trifecta to match any in Tucson sports history.
- Greg Hansen
Arizona football coach Rich Rodriguez and his staff boarded private jets last week to begin a 17-city recruiting journey unlike any in UA history. The working title for this endeavor is “satellite camps,” and it is the new way an isolated school such as Arizona can connect and evaluate with potential football recruits. RichRod and his assistants, in various combinations, will visit nine California cities, two in Utah, Florida and Ohio, and one each in Hawaii and Texas over a 10-day period.
- Greg Hansen
The Wildcats have 17 early commitments in the class of 2017, but it’s not an eye-opening group. Most are two- and three-star prospects. That’s been typical of Arizona football for 50 years. The difference is that RichRod’s approach — with three new assistants and an additional recruiting coordinator — is more aggressive and wide-ranging than at any time in school history. It is a change in the culture of college football recruiting. When RichRod fired long-time defensive assistants Jeff Casteel, Bill Kirelawich and Dave Lockwood in December, it was a manifestation of recruiting ability rivaling coaching ability in modern college football.
- Greg Hansen
Every time I see a Twitter message from a UA-related football recruit that says “I’m blessed to say I have received an offer from Arizona; it is my sixth (or 14th or 21st) offer,” I shake my head and thank the Lord I did not go into the football recruiting business. The day-to-day uncertainty is overwhelming.
- Greg Hansen
When UA basketball coach Sean Miller resumes his recruiting/evaluation work in July, two of his leading targets will be Philadelphia point guard Quade Green and Las Vegas forward Charles O’Bannon Jr. Getting Green away from Kentucky and Villanova would be a major coup. Getting O’Bannon away from his father’s alma mater, UCLA, might be even more difficult. Now that Miller must replace about half of his roster each year, the $2.1 million retention bonus he is to be paid this summer figures out to about a dollar for every time someone in Tucson worries that the transient nature of college basketball will be the ruin of Miller’s program.
- Greg Hansen
In my series listing the 100 best days in Tucson sports history, I goofed by not including former Tucson Parks and Recreation Director Jim Ronstadt in the 1992 acquisition of the Colorado Rockies. It was Ronstadt’s work with Coors Brewing Co. executive Swede Johnson, a former UA vice president, that set the foundation for Tucson’s successful pursuit of the Rockies, who held spring training at Hi Corbett Field for 18 years.
- Greg Hansen
At the sobering funeral for ex-UA basketball standout Sean Rooks last week, about a dozen former teammates gathered to celebrate his life. “Wookie” would’ve been proud to know that Sean Elliott, Jud Buechler, Joe Turner, Matt Muehlebach, Harvey Mason and Reggie Geary, among others, traveled to Los Angeles for the service.
- Greg Hansen
Tucson athlete of the week: Salpointe High grad Alyssa Thompson finished 14th in the NCAA heptathlon last week in Oregon. With a year remaining at Arizona, she projects as the Pac-12 champion (she was second this year) and someone who can score close to 6,000 points and challenge Georgia sophomore Kendell Williams, who will be the NCAA’s top returning heptathlete.
- Greg Hansen
Sahuaro grad Winston Welch had a notable sophomore season at New Mexico Military Institute this season. An outfielder, Welch hit .373 with 17 home runs and 65 RBIs in an all-conference season. He was good enough to earn and accept a scholarship to play next year at Arkansas State.
- Greg Hansen
One of the first things Luke Walton is expected to announce after Sunday’s NBA championship game, is the hiring of Salpointe and UA grad Jesse Mermuys to his Los Angeles Lakers coaching staff. Mermuys, who was a video coordinator under Lute Olson at Arizona, was the head coach of the Toronto Raptors NBA D-League team last season, and also head coach of the Raptors’ Summer League teams in 2015.
- Greg Hansen
The memorial service for ex-UA offensive lineman Pulu Poumele last week in Ocean-side, California, drew many of Poumele’s Desert Swarm-era teammates, including quarterbacks George Malauulu and Dan White, linemen Mani Ott, Tevete Usu and Joe Smigiel and Pueblo High football coach Brandon Sanders. Poumele, who collapsed and died while playing basketball, is survived by his wife and four children.
- Greg Hansen
When Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley retired last week, it ignited talk that Greg Byrne will be on the short list of Gators replacements. Big surprise, huh? Both of Foley’s top associate ADs have been listed as possible replacements for the last five years, but I strongly suspect that if Florida doesn’t hire someone with Gator blood, they’ll give Byrne or Kansas State AD John Currie an offer they can’t refuse. In the ’90s, Foley hired UA women’s golf coach Kim Haddow, UA softball assistant coach Larry Ray and baseball coach Andy Lopez over the years. He fired all three, exhibiting one of the quickest trigger fingers of any college AD.
- Greg Hansen
Sahuaro grad Cesar Salazar is the fifth catcher from Tucson to help Arizona to an NCAA Tournament in the last 40 years. Tucson’s Ron Hassey was the catcher for Arizona’s 1976 World Series championship team, Tucson’s Willie Morales led the Wildcats to the regional title game in 1993, and CDO’s Dennis Anderson was a standout when Jerry Stitt’s 1999 team reached the tournament. When Arizona won the 1986 World Series, Sabino grad Steve Strong was a .400-hitting catcher. Strong is in Omaha this weekend to watch his alma mater. His twin daughters, who are Salpointe grads, attend TCU. One of them dates TCU starting outfielder Josh Watson. Strong was teammates on the ’86 UA team with Diamondbacks manager Chip Hale, whose daughter, Sabrina, plans to enroll at TCU in August.
- Greg Hansen
New UA women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes will hold her first camp/clinic at McKale Center on June 27-30, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Of those Barnes has enlisted to help is ex-Tucson High and Harvard standout Christine Clark, who completed her second season of pro basketball in Italy but does not plan to return to the EuroLeague. Camp info: 520-621-0915.
- Greg Hansen
Tucson High junior-to-be George Arias Jr., whose father, George, was a Pueblo, Pima College and UA third baseman of note, has committed to pitch for Jay Johnson at Arizona. Arias, a right-hander, is believed to be the only pitcher in Arizona history to start state championship games as a freshman and sophomore. He will enter the 2017 prep season as the top prospect in Tucson.
- Greg Hansen
The USA Olympic Swimming Trials begin next Sunday in Omaha, Nebraska, across the street from the College World Series’ TD Ameritrade Park.
Unlike 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012, when more than 45 Tucson-connected swimmers were involved, this year’s list, 32, is not as impressive. The drop is a reflection on the move of Frank Busch from UA coach to director of USA Swimming’s national teams.
There are four strong Rio contenders from Tucson: Matt Grevers (freestyle and backstroke), Kevin Cordes (breaststroke), Caitlin Leverenz (IM specialist) and UA grad Margo Geer (freestyle relay).
The most compelling story is Flowing Wells and UA grad Marcus Titus, who is ranked No. 6 in the 100 breast stroke. The top two in each event will be on Team USA to Rio.
Three former UA All-Americans — Darian Townsend, Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or and Adam Ritter — are making comebacks and will swim in Omaha.
Getting to Rio, however, might be something only Grevers, Cordes and Leverenz can reasonably accomplish.
Jim Click’s Tucson dealerships sell for $93 million
