This is a wonderful time for New York state sports fans. The football season is gearing up for the postseason and Super Bowl, the NBA regular season is starting to show us who might make the playoffs. Plus, the NHL has all hockey fans on the edge of their seats.
New York betting markets are very busy at this time of year. But it is a sports event that has just been that has us looking forward to another sports season in 2023. The soccer World Cup was exciting as ever and New York fans obviously have two MLS teams to get behind. But there are plenty of other lower-league teams across the state that are also worth checking out if you want to sample the atmosphere for yourself.
One local team that offers semi-professional soccer for its community is Kingston Stockade – right here in the Hudson Valley. Read on to find out all about this unique club.
From Virtual to Reality
Kingston Stockade Football Club was founded in 2015 and played its first games the year after. It is largely the brainchild of Dennis Crowley. If that name seems familiar, he is the person behind the global social network, Foursquare – among other social media projects.
It is that element of social and community involvement that played a big part in the soccer club coming to be in the first place. Crowley saw how his social media ideas brought together virtual communities and thought they could be applied to build real communities as well.
Crowley had traveled to the 2010 soccer World Cup in South Africa and noticed how the fans formed their own communities rallying around their national teams. He wanted the same thing to happen on a smaller, local level – and thought that his town of Kingston, NY was the ideal location.
Open Source Soccer
One of the ways that Kingston Stockade stands out from other soccer clubs around the country – and the world – is Crowley’s idea of open source soccer. This initiative is designed to bring transparency and data to the process of building lower league soccer clubs across the US and the world.
Kingston Stockade was born at a time when smaller soccer clubs were springing up all over the country and Crowley wanted to do everything he could to assist fellow-minded people to establish clubs in their own towns and cities. From the pre-season of 2016, all the way to the present day, Crowley has shared blog posts and data that show just how he has established – and kept going – a semi-professional soccer club.
This open source soccer movement has inspired countless others across the country and Kingston Stockade has now essentially become a blueprint for how to run a successful team and club.
The Record So Far
Kingston Stockade began life as an expansion club in the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL). Although the national governing body for soccer doesn’t use a hierarchy below the third tier in the US, the NPSL is a nationwide collection of leagues playing at what is essentially the fourth tier.
With the expansion of the league, Kingston Stockade’s division has changed its name a few times but the team plays teams from the local region in what is now known as the North Atlantic Conference. Playing its games from May through July, the Stockade has managed three winning seasons in seven years – with one season canceled because of COVID.
The team made the regional semifinals in 2017 and then made the conference finals in 2021. It finished fifth in the division last season and failed to make the playoffs. But there are big hopes for the upcoming campaign in 2023.
The Future of Kingston Stockade
It is fair to say that the future of Kingston soccer is bright. Dennis Crowley has continued to employ a team of professionals – and volunteers – who love the town, the sport, and the team.
The Stockade Futures program runs teams at U23 and U20 levels and is developing the stars of the future and giving players from the Hudson Valley a way of breaking through. It looks like the Kingston Stockade community will continue to grow in 2023.
