Stockade chairman basks in big season
Kingston Stockade FC chairman Crowley marvels at semi-pro team’s successful year
A conference championship. A playoff berth. Large numbers of supportive fans at Dietz Stadium.
Those were just a few of the things Kingston Stockade FC chairman Dennis Crowley pointed to when talking about his National Premier Soccer League semi-pro club exceeding expectations in just its second year of existence.
Kingston’s stellar season came to an end on Saturday with a 6-3 loss to Clarkstown SC Eagles of Rockland County in a Northeast Region semifinal game at Drew University. Crowley’s unofficial estimates had Stockade fans outnumbering Clarkstown fans, despite the match being the Eagles’ home match, 274-36.
“It was incredible to see the kind of fan support we had for that game,” Crowley said. “I talked to the team after the match and told them to look at that support. That’s something special. Our fans were chanting long after the Clarkstown fans had left.
“It’s hard not to get emotional when you see that. It was an amazing connection between the club and the fans.”
Crowley noted that Clarkstown was the best team he has seen this season.
“They were tough,” he said. “You saw within the first five, six minutes they were really talented. I thought we played pretty well overall, but they did things to us that we had been doing to other teams all season.
“I’ll be very interested to see how they play against Elm City (in this Saturday’s regional final).”
After finishing its first season 5-8-3, Kingston improved to 8-5-1 this year. After Stockade clinched the Atlantic White Conference’s regular-season title, it defeated Hartford City 2-1 in overtime to not only win in the team’s firstever playoff match, but to capture the conference crown.
“This season undoubtedly exceeded my expectations,” Crowley said. “To win a conference title
in just our second year ... it was totally unexpected.”
Coming into the season, Crowley said Kingston’s biggest goal was to build on its solid first year.
“Last year, we had an average record. We didn’t make the playoffs, but we had great fan support,” he said. “There was a laundry list of the things I wanted to hit this year — on and off the field — and we hit just about all of them.
“It’s clear we’re doing something here that’s really resonating with the people.”
Among the highlights, according to Crowley, was drawing approximately 1,400 fans to the team’s playoff win over Hartford.
“That game was definitely the highlight to our season,” he said. “It was so stressful. I had no expectations. I just wanted to get through the match. Seeing the crowd support, the way the team played, I was so proud of us as an organization. I was so proud of the guys and so proud of our fans.
“In our first match (in the team’s season-opening 3-1 loss to Hartford on May 8), we had less than 500 fans. To go from that to 1,400 ... I could not have asked for anything more. We broke 1,000 twice and had 992 in another match.
“Getting 1,000 — basically — in three (of seven home matches) this year is really good.”
Kingston averaged 792 fans a game in its six home regular-season matches this season at Dietz, 15th nationally among the 96 NPSL teams. Adding in the attendance for its home playoff game, Kingston averaged 879 fans a game, which would rank it 12th nationally.
“To do what we have done in two years here, may teams have tried to model their plans after ours,” Crowley said. “That’s something I’m very proud of. I spoke with someone from an NPSL club out of Asheville, N.C.
“They average about 2,500 fans a game and he said they were emulating what we’ve been doing here. They just have a larger market to work with.”
“I think the best part of how we’ve done this is just how organic it has all happened,” he added. “We really wanted the community to be invested in this team from the get-go. People would make their own flags. The Dutch Guard (Stockade FC support group) came along. POOK (Percussion Orchestra of Kingston) got involved. It was amazing.
“It was all stuff that we didn’t plan on, but this kind of organic movement was the recipe to our success.”
Crowley said the support made a huge difference in their matches at Dietz.
“We played some teams that didn’t play in front of nearly as many fans as they did when they came up to Kingston to face us,” he noted. “That was undoubtedly intimidating. You hear fans being called the 12th man, and when our fans got going, you could really feel that energy. And our team fed off that energy.”
Crowley also marveled at the marked improvement of talent on the team from year one to year two.
“The biggest difference between the first and second year was having better access to the better college players,” Crowley said. “That first year, people didn’t know who we were. We’ll see what happens next year. We won a championships, made some noise.
“I would think we would have access to even better college players. As we continue to make a name for ourselves, that cycle would only get better.”
Crowley said he expects to have a couple of organizational meetings over the coming months as Kingston prepares for the 2018 campaign. While he doesn’t have a set list of goals for next year down pat, he has many ideas.
“Just in terms of the financial aspect, the question we continue to ask ourselves is how do we make a program like Stockade in a small market like Kingston break even,” Crowley said. “We’re closer this year, but my goal is to get us to the point where we can run the team forever.
“People have brought up starting a youth program or a women’s team. I have a list of probably 100 things I’d love to do with Stockade if we had an unlimited budget, but we don’t. One of our challenges is given how far we’ve come in such a short period of time, not to get too far ahead of ourselves.”
Crowley also spoke highly of first-year coach David Lindholm.
“I thought he did a great job for us,” Crowley said. “We haven’t had that conversation (about Lindholm’s return) yet, but I’m very happy with what he did for us this year.”