From what I've been able to follow on USL and some other sites. It looks like there is going to be some expansion/movement for this next season.

Brand New
Williamsburg
Santa Barbra
Richmond


Possible
Raliegh

From D3
Rhode Island
possible Connecticut


To D3
Brooklyn
Westchester

Has anyone heard of teams that aren't coming back or other additions? Also heard about Des Moines moving into another division. If that happens I could see both the Chicago teams in the same division.

Rumor has it the Miami Strike Force are gone. Haven't seen confirmation though.

I've also heard that Northern Virginia will drop from D3 to PDL (a step up in my opinion) and join a division with Williamsburg, Richmond and a Raleigh team.

Mike

I heard that Wichita will not be back and the Mountain division will be joining teams from the mid-west (the division with Des Moines). Also that Twin Cities may not be back. Not sure about that. But overall there will be the same amount of teams from last year.

Twin Cities moves to Greenville: http://www.uslsoccer.com/eng/stats/teama...edId&id=1344272

Are you sure?

I'm assuming this is the story you wanted to link to:
http://www.uslsoccer.com/eng/stats/teama...edId&id=1344160

It only says that the owners were the former owners of the Twin Cities Phoenix. It doesn't say anything about this franchise being the moved Twin Cities Tornado.

It may very well be true, but the story doesn't indicate that this is the case.

Sorry, wrong link. That together with this note , lead me to believe the franchise was moved, not created.

[ 12-13-2001: Message edited by: SeattleFan ]

Sure looks that way. I had the Tornado and Phoenix reversed in my mind anyway, so my argument didn't make alot of sense.

That's what happens when you're a year removed from the PDL and 4 1/2 years removed from the Twin Cities.

I can confirm that the Twin Cities Tornados/Phoenix are moving to Greenville!

There's also a Greenville press release here:
http://www.a-league.com/news/2001/news,2001,0756.shtml

I've heard that in addtion to Wichita, Colorado Springs will also not be returning. The Heartland is lossing Twin Cities, but gaining Appleton, WI. The Heartland and Rocky Moutain will be combining. The new division will include;

Denver, Boulder, Kansas City, Sioux Fall, Des Moines, Thunder Bay, Appleton and Chicago (Eagles).

nashville metros

The Greenville Lions "Premier", huh? Yuck! I am glad Greenville is doing this, but in my opinion, the name stinks. It reeks of a team trying a little too hard to be worldly. Why not the Cubs, or even "Reserves".

Also, I'm rather curious about this Appleton team. Do they have a website yet? A name? I like seeing a variety of market sizes represented, as you see in other countries (well, O.K., there will never be Minneapolis, Bloomington and Blaine, etc. in America, but you know what I mean). I just hope the Appletonians know what they're doing.

Good luck to both Greenville and Appleton. Should be a great 2002 PDL, barring weird scheduling (which is usually a given :p )

Cheers,

Cory

Greenville Lions Premier isn't the best. BUt then again neither is Richmond's new PDL team the Richmond Future. I personally can't wait for the next season with an A League and a PDL team to support.

Mike

Yeah, makes me wish I lived in Richmond! The new PDL team is the Future, huh? Is this a new geogrphical reincarnation of the South Florida Future, which I heard no longer exists, at least as such?

No it's nothing to do with South Florida, the Future is a PDL team built from scratch to complete the missing link in the Kickers youth system.

I imagine the thinking behind choosing the 'Future' name is to represent the Kickers youth policy and how they are building towards the 'future'. Personally, I think it's better than Kickers Reserves or Kickers Select.

Anybody know when the PDL schedules will be released?

You're really getting into this PDL stuff, huh, Mikey?

Yeah I am,
Scarey aint it ?
more open cup games, get to see some decent college talent without the idiotic NCAA rules. This should be fun

Mike

A new PDL team, the Houston Toros are holding tryouts today: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/sports/other/1199209

Seattle fan beat me to it. Anyone have any more info on the toros? Like what division and what stadium they'll be playing?

No Caddman, you beat me to it. I got the information from your post in the bigsoccer Expansion forum.

I hadn't heard anything about a PDL team in Houston before today. The Hurricanes would like to get back in D3.

A question. Is there any promotion/relegation between D3 and the PDL?

There's no pro/rel per se, but there is movement of teams between the two. Due to the economic differences between the two levels, a strict pro-rel setup wouldn't make a lot of sense. Some teams move up or down because of factors like geography. To my understanding, D3 in Texas is untenable because there are no nearby teams.

Perhaps there's a plan underway to have a Texas division in D3. The Hurricanes owner seems to think they'll be back there soon.

This would kick *** if Houston got a soccer club back!!!

They probably would play at Butler Stadium (where the Hurricanes used to play) or there is another stadium (forget what it's called) that the Houston Energy of the Women's Professional Football League played at in 2000 at off US 290.

I do agree that right now D3 doesn't make economic sense, being there really isn't any D3 teams close by. It would take a heavy money man to get D3 done right now since travel will be prohibitive.

Dylan

More stuff from the Chronicle on the Toros. According to McTaggart, the 1st home game is May 5. He also says there will be more tryouts this weekend. And there's a quote from Konstin.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/sports/soc/1203655

And could someone please tell the Chronicle it's not the United States Soccer Leagues.

From what I've read of McTaggart so far, he's much MUCH better than Richard Dean ever hoped to be. aside from the United States Soccer Leagues, McTaggart hasn't made much in the way of galring mistakes about Houston soccer.

Up to the last season of the Hurricanes in D3, Dean kept writing the Hurricanes played in a division that no longer existed. Thankfuly the Chronicle took Dean off of soccer. I never read a clolumn of his that didn't have at least 2-3 errors in it.

Here's hoping McTaggart gives coverage to the Toros and I now have someone I can yelp at to get coverage.

LET'S GO TOROS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dylan

I don't know that any of them take the soccer notebook too seriously. McTaggart might be better than Dean and Duarte. I hate to be a pessimist, but I don't see the Toros getting much more coverage in the future. The Hurricanes get zero nowdays. And as far as the new "Houston derby" goes, I fall on the side of the Hurricanes

Regarding the Houston Toros, there is a new divison with several new teams:

Mid South Division (5)
Austin Lightning
Houston Toros
Lafayette Outlaws
Memphis
NashvilleMetros(Provisional)*
Texas Spurs

All Teams are new except the Metros which dropped down frm A-league due to financial trouble. The team in Memphis is not named yet, it will start practicing around March and will be composed mostly of college players from the University of Memphis and Christian Brothers University and 5 foreign quality players from the area.

It should be interesting. On a side note anyone know if the schedule for PDL has been released?

Actually there are two teams that are returning from last season in that division; Lafayette Lightning and Texas Spurs.