One of my earliest memories was on a sunny summer day sometime in the mid-80's. My parents brought me to a park (some say Jones) and sat under the pavilion with their friends to socialize. Only the gathering was for something called the Cedar Rapids Comets. As I peered out from the shade, and as the adults talked, I was fascinated by what I saw. I have only a snap shot of that moment in memory, but it was of the goal in front of me and slightly to my right being attacked and ultimately bulged by a strike from a Comets forward. I don't know why this sticks with me, but it does like few sports memories have. Perhaps its because its the moment I became a sports fan.
Fast forward to 1994 and a move to Michigan that had happened a year before. It was my first summer back in Iowa. The back page of the Gazette was laid out and my Dad was showing me the details of the World Cup, about to kick off that week in the USA. I had no idea it was coming. Soccer had came and went (after two years of playing in 3rd and 4th grade) in seemingly a fleeting a fashion as that memory of the Comets. I was a dedicated baseball fan, going back to our family season tickets to the Cedar Rapids Reds, who managed to become successful in those intervening years. But baseball had betrayed me in the previous year, having gone on strike. I was still bitter, and like a man going back to a lover who had jilted them, my eyes were open. Enter that summer and that magical World Cup, with its Stoichkovs, its Baggios, and its resurgent team USA. The faded spark lit at that CR Comets match was given new flame.
MLS was not yet there to capitalize on this soccer surge. The A-League had a huge upswing in those years of 1994-'96, but it was a second division league. There was no franchise in nearby either at that time. I had to look elsewhere for a club. That elsewhere was the Palace of Auburn Hills and the Detroit Neon. The CISL was launched by NBA owners wanting to fill their buildings in summer with no big-time outdoor league. Luckily, the Pistons had one of those owners. Playing against the remnants of the great NASL (which I will get to in a coming piece) the Neon were led by a bald Eastern European maestro nicknamed "Drago". Drago and the Neon were one of the best teams in the CISL, on and off the field. Watching every game on PASS Network, I played as the Neon everywhere. I used our trees as a goal outside, even got our carpet in the basement to be a green turf-like monstrosity that friends would help me clear furniture out for our arena (my mom suffered some broken furniture as casualties to this obsession). It was big time to me, and it seemed big time a lot of places in that post-World Cup pre-MLS couple years. It was featured in sports magazines, catalogs carried team gear, and matches were shown on national television from across the country.
Alas, MLS came into the picture, outdoor soccer slowly took root in the US with the best players choosing to ply their trade there, and indoor soccer was on the decline. Now, here I am, back in Cedar Rapids, my boyhood home, and we have this in Cedar Rapids, we will face Detroit (now the Flo) and Milwaukee, and Missouri. I hope there are many kids that be as wide-eyed as I was as that boy at the park. It's no coincidence that first club experience sticks out. I feel like I probably would not have been a fan had I not had a team I felt was my own. Now kids across the Tech Corridor of Iowa, from Waterloo-Cedar Falls, to Iowa City-Coralville, to Cedar Rapids can have that moment. Hopefully, their parents furniture can survive beyond this winter.
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