Rangers try to foot cost of winning
It was time to figure out how to get to Miami.
The Little Rock Rangers had just gone up 1-0 over Laredo Heat SC in the South Region semifinals Tuesday night, and Rangers owner Jonathan Wardlaw needed to come up with the $20,000 travel expense in case his team played Miami FC
2 in the regional final.
Shortterm flights for 21 people. Hotel. Transportation in Miami. Plus food. Twenty thousand dollars, Wardlaw estimated, would cover the trip.
In the National Premier Soccer League, 98 minor-league teams annually scrounge up the money to finance playoff runs that can last up to six rounds with multiple road trips in between.
With limited resources and dozens of teams traveling in the playoffs, the NPSL awards a $5,000 stipend to each traveling team for the first four rounds, and it fully reimburses teams that reach the national semifinals and championship game. The Rangers’ game in Miami is considered the quarterfinals.
The Rangers’ 12-hour bus ride from Little Rock to Laredo cost $6,300, Wardlaw said, and the third-year nonprofit franchise didn’t have enough money left to cover another road trip, plus the rental fee check for playing 11 home games at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock this season.
Wardlaw needed another option.
“I always want us to appear as professional as
possible, not beg for money and things like that,” said Wardlaw, 43, the vice president of an audiometrics company. “I was just to the point where I needed to ask for some help. Some people suggested [GoFundMe] to me, and I was like, might as well give it a shot.”
After the Rangers’ first goal, Wardlaw pulled out his iPhone and started to create the GoFundMe page.
Then his phone died, but the Rangers’ season didn’t when they beat Laredo 2-1 in extra time.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get to Miami,” Wardlaw told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette through his Apple Watch after Tuesday night’s victory.
Wednesday morning, while riding the bus back to Little Rock, Wardlaw finished up the GoFundMe account. Then he posted. “We’re headed to Miami!!!” the account read. “As you can imagine the budgets for minor league soccer are small … Any help you can give to continue our postseason run is greatly appreciated.”
Wardlaw received an email each time a donation arrived. *PING*
Dylan Waugh: $20. *PING* Christina Reid: $20. *PING*
Will Montgomery: $100. Wardlaw turned in his seat on the bus and looked at Montgomery, the Rangers’ third-year head coach.
“We’ve got to get it going,” Montgomery said.
Within an hour, 63 people donated more than $6,000.
As of press time, 223 separate donations had garnered $18,588 of the $20,000 goal.
The amounts rolled in as low as $5 and as high as $500.
“Having two children that have participated in club soccer in neighboring states, I know how financially burdensome it can be,” said Lori Holzwarth, 49, an attorney in Maumelle who donated $200 along with her husband, Ted. “I can’t imagine putting a group of young men on a bus, taking them to Laredo, and then to Miami to compete. What we do as parents is small in comparison to what Jonathan’s having to do, and I wanted to support that.”
Ted and Lori have been season-ticket holders since the inaugural 2016 season, and Ted recalled when Wardlaw hand-delivered their season tickets and was transparently uncertain about the franchise’s future.
“Jonathan Wardlaw is a hell of a guy, and people have great admiration for what he does,” said Ted, 50. “There’s no way that these people are going to let him fail. We’re not going to let that happen.”
Matt Boullt — the general manager of Tulsa Athletic, a Heartland Conference rival that the Rangers eliminated in the first round of the playoffs — even chipped in $20.
“It’s these lower-league teams,” said Boullt, 28. “We’ve got to stick together.”
Former international and Major League Soccer player Ante Jazic, the Rangers’ director of soccer operations, and
his wife, Annemarie, donated $500. Her father, Alex Dillard, president of Dillards Inc., also donated $500.
“It’s so inspiring to see some of the support,” Annemarie said. “People don’t realize that all this work is for free. [Wardlaw] does all his work, he and his wife [Babs], and they spend their weekend’s extra time on a project they don’t get anything financially out of.”
It’s a plight NPSL franchises have dealt with since the league began in 2003.
“At the end of the day, it’s a semi-professional league,” said Joe Barrone, president of the NPSL. “It’s the responsibility of the team and the rest of the owners to fund their individual teams.”
Barrone said Wednesday the league has increased Little Rock’s travel stipend above $5,000.
“We’ve upped the amount to make them more comfortable,” said Barrone, who would not disclose the final amount.
Wardlaw guaranteed Wednesday that the Rangers would travel to Miami.
And the donations continued to flow in.
“Soccer people are different than other sports fans,” Ted Holzwarth said. “They’re more hard-core about just the sport itself. It’s been a much maligned sport. It’s been called a communist sport. American football fans put it down.
“When you have this animosity from the outside world, soccer fans get hardcore and really tend to support their own.”