The Aztexan

Hot on the heels of my last post about PDL expansion team West Texas United, the team has announced their name, mascot and a major sponsor.

The good news is, the sponsor doesn't sound too bad.

West Texas National Bank was chartered in 2000, the result of the merger of three independent banks. Headquartered in Midland, the bank’s corporate "roots" in the community date back to 1904.

In addition to being the "title" sponsor, the West Texas National Bank partnership also includes WTNB patches on the uniforms, Youth Jersey Night sponsorship at the home opener, halftime contests at home games, and more.

The name, on the other hand, doesn't do much for me.

After announcing the birth of the franchise in September, a "name the team" contest was held, in conjunction with the Midland Reporter-Telegram. It turns out the contest will have two winners, as the name "Sockers" is actually a combination of two entries.

"The name 'SockHounds' was suggested, a direct tie-in to the RockHounds baseball club," Hoppel said. "We also like Coyotes for a number of reasons, especially as it relates to a team logo and potential mascot. So, the name 'Sockers' is really a hybrid. It’s also unique, as no other minor or major league team is using the name."

Okay, at least they didn't use "SockHounds"; that would have been even worse. But using a misspelling of the name of the sport itself? Really?

Since they'll be our rivals, I guess I should be glad they have an easy name to make fun of. But in my opinion, they should have just left it at "West Texas United", and had the coyote as mascot and nickname (a la The Potters, Hoops, Orange Crush, etc.).

Labels: rivals, U-23

Time to start taking a closer look at other expansion teams in the Aztex universe. Let's start in the PDL, with the first new team to join the Aztex U23s in the Mid South Division: Midland's West Texas United.

The team was announced on Sept. 15.

United Soccer Leagues announced Monday that the ownership of the Midland RockHounds minor league baseball team unveiled plans to bring a new level of soccer to West Texas with a Premier Development League franchise. The team will begin play in spring of 2009 at Grande Communications Stadium next door to the home of the ‘Hounds at the Scharbauer Sports Complex.

The full name of the team is yet to be announced, and will be the result of a name-the-team contest (I think leaving it at just "West Texas United" would be cool, but maybe modern day sports marketing forbids such subtlety).

The "primary" name for the new soccer team is derived from the largest youth club soccer organization in the Permian Basin: West Texas United Soccer Club.

Utilizing the name for the new PDL team was a joint decision. The PDL team is not "taking over" the youth programs. Instead, the two will work jointly to create and advance the best possible atmosphere for the sport of soccer in the Permian Basin.

An interesting aspect of this organization is their existing sports-business experience: they also own the minor league baseball team Midland Rockhounds. The Rockhounds play in the Double-A "Texas League" (not in the higher level Triple-A league the Round Rock Express play in).

The club will be operated by RockHounds co-owners Miles Prentice and Bob Richmond and staffed by the existing baseball front office. RockHounds general manager Monty Hoppel says that, although the sports share the same playing season (spring / summer), the two will make an outstanding combination.

“We think the soccer team will compliment the RockHounds season, rather than compete with it,” Hoppel said. “The (eight) soccer home dates will fall when the RockHounds are on the road so, really, we have the best of both worlds.”

The Rockhounds management seem to know what they're doing on the baseball side of things; the team was recognized as the top minor league baseball franchise in the nation in 2007. Time will tell if they can run a soccer team as well.

The new club's experience doesn't stop there. They've also named Jesus Enriquez as head coach.

The native of Delicias, Chihuahua, Mexico brings a decade of coaching experience to the new franchise, nine of those seasons coming with the El Paso Patriots of the USL. Enriquez served as an assistant coach with the club from 1998-2002, and was named head coach in 2003, guiding the Patriots to a pair of division titles in four seasons. His 2005 team reached the PDL championship game, falling in overtime (6-5 on penalty kicks after a 0-0 draw in regulation time) in the title game.

...Enriquez’ playing career included two stints with the Patriots in El Paso (1991-94 and 1997), twice being named the team’s captain. He also played for USL clubs in El Paso (the Gallos) and Phoenix, as well as the Mexican First Division, and was a member of the 1985-86 Mexican University National Team which competed in the World University Games in Kobe, Japan.

One aspect of the new Midland team that was known from day one — earlier, really — was where they would play. They'll be at Grande Communications Stadium, the football-field half of the Scharbauer Sports Complex (Citibank Ballpark being the baseball-field half). Here's the Google Maps satellite view. It looks like a beautiful facility, though it's clearly built for throwball, and the 15,000 seats might look pretty empty for PDL games.

A hearty welcome to our new Mid South rivals. I imagine El Paso is happy to have a team practically next door (only 4 hours away; that's "next door" in west Texas terms, right?) In future posts we'll take a look at the newly-promoted USL-1 side Cleveland City Stars and the other Texas PDL expansion team, the Rio Grande Valley Bravos.

Labels: rivals, U-23, USL-1

I went down to get a first-hand look at our new stadium today. And I took my camera: here's my 36-picture Nelson Field photo set on Flickr.

One slight difficulty in getting a view of the place was the fence. There's chain link fence around the stands, of course, and everything's chained up, as you'd expect. But the entire rest of the field is surrounded by a green, 8-foot-high, solid metal fence. You simply cannot see anything through it at all. I wondered if it was just for construction, but it looks pretty permanent to me. I'm not kidding when I say that a shorter correspondent would not have been able to get some of these pictures of the field. But, while not pretty, maybe this Green Monster will have a silver lining, if it keeps in all the home field noise of the crowd.

As you may be able to tell, I just walked all the way around the stadium — clockwise starting on the west side, if you're looking at the satellite view — snapping away as I went.

One thing you'll notice immediately is that the lovely grass soccer pitch visible in Google Maps' satellite view is no more. We knew that had been replaced in recent years with Field Turf, but you can see it in full color here, down to the bright white throwball lines. The track surrounding the field is all new, too, not that it makes much difference what color the big separator between the pitch and the stands is.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that it's more or less like Dragon Stadium, where the U-23s played this year. It is, after all, a high school football stadium. Granted that I didn't get a very close look. And, the field surface is new, which is good. But otherwise it doesn't seem either especially great, or especially terrible.

That's the stadium itself. The location is definitely an improvement, being much more central (obviously) than Round Rock High School was last season. Hopefully it will be that much easier for lots of folks to get to. As you can see in the pictures and the satellite view, there's a good deal of parking right around the stadium. I don't know if that's enough parking for a capacity crowd, but it's certainly got House Park beat on that count.

As visible in one picture, there's a Capital Metro bus stop right on the edge of the parking lot. It's for route 300; I don't know whether people will use that for game-day transportation or not.

There's still some scouting to be done to find the best nearby watering hole (Nomad Bar, about a mile and a half away, seems promising). And there's an El Regio stand very close by, too. You haven't had truly excellent chicken until you've had El Regio chicken (available in 2 sizes: half or whole).

For this post, I just wanted to make a quick fact-finding run and see it in person. What I found was about what I expected: a quiet, empty high school football stadium. Not anything awesome, but that's perfectly okay. We all know this isn't the ultimate home of the Austin Aztex. Look no further than the very announcement, in which the possibility of a future at House Park is already hinted at.

And even that, hopefully, isn't where our Aztex will wind up playing forever. Someday we'll have — Chantico willing — our very own stadium, just for our sport and just for our teams. Until then, Nelson Field will be more than fine.

The Aztex have a house; it'll be up to the team and the fans to make it a home!

Labels: stadium, USL-1

I caught the following short (less than a minute) Aztex story on News8Austin last night: Head Coach Adrian Heath talking about the new stadium.


Speaking of Coach Heath, here's a nice story in The Echo, the Liverpool evening paper, on his immigration to Texas: Everton legend Adrian 'Inchy' Heath's big Texan dream.

"The difference [in US soccer] between now and when the likes of Pele, Bobby Moore and George Best came over, is night and day. It was almost like a circus then, with players at the end of their careers, but everything is geared to the future now.

"The potential is world class."

There is clearly potential in Austin, too. Heath is not one for making bold declarations but the team he put together this summer to see what he had to work with captured the imagination of locals... "We’ve got some decent kids here and word is starting to spread."

"We just want to try and build something that we have had at home, and in a few years we’ll have a thriving academy and the players who have passed through will be making a name for themselves.”

Last (and probably least), I was flipping through the latest issue of the free, by-mail Community Impact paper (Northwest Austin edition), and saw this. It was in their section on new area businesses. They seem to think it's a store, but bad press is better than no press, right?

Labels: media, stadium, USL-1

Announced in today's Statesman: Aztex set to play at Nelson Field. They acknowledged not getting the location most fans were hoping for, House Park, but that's still not ruled out in the future.

"We always wanted to play as close to downtown as we could," Rawlins said.

But the stadium closest to downtown, House Park, will be unavailable to the Aztex in 2009 because of ongoing locker room renovations.

Rawlins says a multiyear deal with the Austin school district gives the team an option to move to House Park in 2010, but Nelson Field, adjacent to Reagan High, will be the team's home when it begins play April 18.

It doesn't specify, but presumably both the USL-1 and PDL teams will play there. The article also has this hint about players moving up from this year's PDL squad:

Rawlins expects up to six members of the Aztex PDL club to be promoted to the USL-1 team. The rest of the roster will be filled in the USL draft of college players and by signing free agents.

Update: Phil Rawlins was also on AM 1300 with the stadium news this morning. I can't find a link directly to their post, but go to AM 1300 The Zone and look for "Soccer in Austin!!", dated "Friday 12-05-2008 8:33am CT"

Labels: stadium, U-23, USL-1