NWA soccer club seeks name suggestions
ROGERS — The state’s branch of the United Soccer League has kicked off a “Name the Team” campaign.
USL Arkansas is the group bringing a professional men’s and women’s soccer club to Northwest Arkansas. USL Arkansas co-founders are Chris Martinovic and Warren Smith.
The naming campaign comes after a series of community listening sessions, and further information can be found online on the Fan Zone tab of the USL Arkansas website. The campaign will last until the end of the month.
Fifteen listening sessions with over 400 attendees have been held in Bentonville, Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Rogers, Siloam Springs and Springdale. Two meetings were held in Spanish in Rogers and Springdale, and one meeting was with the Marshallese community in Springdale, said Wes Harris, USL Arkansas managing director.
“We want to hear from you, Northwest Arkansas — what are your name ideas and why? It’s your club, help name it,” Martinovic said.
USL Arkansas supporter Collin Whitehead of Fayetteville said he likes the names Ozarks United, or Ozark SC.
“We could use Northwest Arkansas, but it’s long and NWA will make some people think of the rap group,” he said. “Ozarks plays into the natural aspect of our region, and United makes sense as we’re a spread-out area.”
USL Arkansas has received more than 400 online entries so far, Harris said Wednesday.
Online polling and other types of outreach have helped in the past when it comes to naming an area team or mascot, such as in the case of the Northwest Arkansas Naturals — the name was selected by the ownership group and announced in March 2007, according to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette report. The Naturals are a Springdale-based minor league baseball team that started play in 2008.
Naturals won 33% of an internet vote, edging Thunder Chickens as the mascot name of choice. Thunder Chickens received 27% of the more than 2,000 votes submitted online. There were two rounds of internet voting, in-person surveys and polling by phone, according to the report.
Naturals, a nod to the state’s nickname “The Natural State,” won out over a pool of finalists that included Monarchs, Ridge Runners, Highlanders, Anglers and Bass. In addition to winning online polling, the name held up in an estimated 400 phone surveys and 130 in-person surveys at the Northwest Arkansas Mall in Fayetteville, according to the story.
Bentonville West High School in Centerton, which opened in 2016, utilized the community to form a pool that was further narrowed, before being voted on by students. The school mascot is the wolverine.
The School Board voted 5-2 vote on the school name and mascot at a March 2014 meeting. The community suggested several dozen names and mascots for the second high school. Board members whittled down the list to three names and four mascots, then asked junior high students to vote on them. Bentonville West received about two-thirds of the students’ votes, with Alliance and Bentonville Alliance receiving the rest of the votes. Students also clearly demonstrated a preference for wolverines over jaguars, falcons and chargers.
USL Arkansas officials on Tuesday released initial renderings for a soccer stadium in the Pinnacle Hills entertainment district.
USL Arkansas plans to develop a 5,000-seat, multipurpose stadium — on 11.5 acres at the intersection of South Bellview Road and Lazy L Street — that will be privately funded and cost $15 million to $20 million, officials said.
The United Soccer League Championship features 24 men’s professional teams, each playing a 34-game regular season from March to October, and receives Division II sanctioning from the U.S. Soccer Federation, according to a July news release that announced the Northwest Arkansas club.
Kicking off its inaugural season in August 2024, the USL Super League will bring professional women’s soccer closer to home for more communities nationwide and plans to receive Division I sanctioning from U.S. Soccer. The USL Super League will play on an international “fall-to-summer” calendar — unique in American soccer — to align with global women’s soccer, according to the July release.
USL Arkansas’ goal is to begin play in the USL Championship before the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off in the United States and in the fall that same year for the USL Super League, the July release states.