On a recent hot, sunny Saturday at the soccer stadium in Rochester’s Brown Square neighborhood, a newly assembled women’s amateur team called Flower City 1872 – named for the year Rochesterian suffragist Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women were convicted for voting in the presidential election – was playing its second game ever. Sporting a black and dark purple color scheme with the silhouette of Anthony emblazoned on their jerseys, the players stood in contrast to the brightly colored stands surrounding the field at Rochester Community Sports Complex. The green and yellow seats were a visible reminder of the days when the Rochester Rhinos called the stadium home from 2006 to 2017.
Fast forward to May 2023, and the majority of the more than 13,000 seats were empty, with the exception of those occupied by roughly 100 fans scattered behind the players’ benches and a few more on the other side of the field. The players from the men’s soccer team Flower City Union, affiliated with the 1872 squad, loudly supported the home club on the pitch from the shaded comfort of the second-level suites.
Fourteen minutes into the game, it was a promising start for 1872 after midfielder Taylor Rutland sent a volley up and over the BC United goalkeeper from 35 yards away to make it 1-0 — and score the first goal in Flower City 1872’s young history. As the match progressed, the away team gradually took control, and the final score, 6-1 in favor of BC United, told the full story.
Despite the fact that some of the players for 1872 had only been with the club for a matter of days, defender Amanda Wisotzke said there were moments in the game when the team played like they’d been together for years. "I think we're definitely capable of great things,” she said, “and sometimes good things take time.”
When it comes to local soccer players achieving great things, one player towers over all: Abby Wambach, the Rochester native and National Soccer Hall of Famer who attended Mercy High School and went on to win the 2015 Women’s World Cup and Olympic gold twice with the United States women’s national team.
As a soccer player at Mercy during the height of the superstar’s career, Wisotzke considered Wambach a role model. Wisotzke hopes Flower City 1872 can be inspiring to today’s young players. “Especially a team like Flower City that’s so empowering for women, having played on several teams in the past,” she said, “this is a team that the younger generation of female soccer players can look up to.”
PRESERVING THE (FLOWER CITY) UNION
Flower City Union, part of the third-tier National Independent Soccer Association, is the only active professional men’s soccer team in Rochester.
FCU
Head Coach Jordan Sullivan, a London, UK native who played at Monroe Community College and Roberts Wesleyan University, says the second-year team is working on establishing an identity based on community engagement. This is articulated in the club’s motto, “Rooted in Rochester,” and exemplified in local youth coaching and coaching seminars, as well as in the product on the field. The goal is to rekindle the spark enjoyed by the Rochester Rhinos 20 years ago, when thousands of fans rooted them on at the former Frontier Field.
“Not many people like to support a losing team,” Sullivan said. “So it's imperative that the coaching staff get it right on the field and we start producing results, we start getting points on the board, we start winning games.” Sullivan added that it’s important that the team plays in a way that fellow soccer players and aficionados will recognize and respect, a style that he calls “good to the soccer eye.”
The FCU head coach credits Nelson Cupello, the Brazilian-born, longtime Rochesterian who coached Sullivan at Monroe Community College, with giving him an opportunity to pursue soccer in America. When Sullivan became FCU manager for the 2023 season, he brought his former coach out from retirement to be an assistant coach for the club.
Cupello, who has extensive experience as a soccer player and coach in the Rochester area, says that historically there have been too many local teams vying to be the main attraction. “The size of Rochester, the population, you can only support so many professional teams,” he said. “You can't have four or five professional soccer teams. And I think the city has to get behind one team.”
REVIVING THE SPIRIT OF THE RHINOS
If there was one moment when professional soccer in Rochester was at its pinnacle, it might’ve been September 14, 1999 — when the underdog Rochester Raging Rhinos defeated the Major League Soccer club Colorado Rapids 2-0 to capture the U.S. Open Cup among a field of 40 teams from all over America. Or, maybe the Rhinos’ consecutive A-League titles the following two years. The Rhinos remained princes of the pitch at Frontier Field until 2005.
The team shut down in 2008, after ownership defaulted on its stadium agreement with the City of Rochester. After a series of stops and starts in multiple leagues, the team again faced stadium lease issues with the city in 2016 — at which point David and Wendy Dworkin assumed ownership of the club.
More false starts followed as the team attempted to join the USL League One, but it wasn’t until 2021 — when professional soccer player Jamie Vardy, a star striker in England’s Premier League, joined the Rhinos’ front office as a co-owner — that a true resurgence seemed likely. The team was rebranded as Rochester New York FC and entered the 2022 season as the only independent club in the recently formed third-tier league MLS Next Pro. But after just one season, in which RNYFC made the playoffs, the organization failed to field a team for 2023 and closed operations due to what it characterized as an unviable business plan.
A CROWDED FIELD
With RNYFC’s future uncertain and the nascent Flower City Union and 1872 teams attempting to secure a foothold as the eminent local soccer teams, other clubs in the community continue to operate. These organizations include the Rochester Lancers, which recently merged with WNY Flash under its banner; Roc City Boom of the fourth-tier United Premier Soccer League; the newly formed youth teams known as Flash Rochester (affiliated with WNY Flash Academy) and RNYFC Youth’s MLS Next Academy and pre-academy teams. There is also Smugtown FC – a collection of UPSL, Rochester District, and recreational teams, some of whose players have ties to Flower City Union.
Michael Cunningham, a Flower City Union forward whose instructional soccer channel on YouTube, 7mlc, has more than 1.4 million subscribers, says local teams have spent too much time competing against one another for fans. “Anytime a club seems to struggle in Rochester is when it just wants to compete with the other clubs,” said the former Roberts Wesleyan University and Lancers player. “Instead of worrying about what the Rochester soccer community needs, they're just worrying, ‘how can we do it slightly better or different than another club?’”
Rather than contribute to what he sees as petty competition, the English-born Cunningham said local teams need to invest in youth players, whom he sees as the future of local soccer. “What I think would be really great for Flower City, and what I think the Rhinos did so well in how they engaged the community, is they had their youth clubs all attached to a first-team ultimate goal,” Cunningham said.
It remains to be seen how Flower City Union and 1872 will fare the rest of the season and in future seasons, but it’s clear that the vacuum left by the Rochester Rhinos has yet to be filled. As youth soccer programs designed to encourage and develop young players grow, a local professional soccer club to which those players could aspire has yet to establish itself as the face of a flourishing Rochester soccer culture.
Daniel J. Kushner is an arts writer at CITY.