The owner of the only professional soccer team in Arkansas peered at the field Saturday from the War Memorial Stadium press box, iPad in hand, ready to start the introduction music of the Little Rock Rangers' sixth match of their second season.
Jonathan Wardlaw had spent the day setting up the facility with nearly 12 volunteers, including his wife, Babs. The sponsorship banners were hung, the tents unfolded, the luxury suites opened. Now, he could play the maestro and introduce a style of play many Arkansans still have not seen.
Wardlaw, 42, looked at the sound board operator in the room: "Let's bring us back out."
The Rangers were born four years ago out of a state of depression: Wardlaw and a small group of soccer dads sat through youth club team road trips to Tennessee, Oklahoma and Texas wondering why their sons were losing so often.
"We'd get beat so bad, just like when I had grown up," said Wardlaw, whose two boys are now 11 and 8 years old. "Nothing had changed. And I was just like, 'Maybe we need to do some semi-pro team or something like that, that will show the parents and kids what the speed of this game is.' "
The idea deepened. Perhaps, Wardlaw thought, if there were a professional soccer team in Arkansas, the kids finally would have role models that might keep them playing the sport, and at the same time, introduce soccer to a state that still didn't know much about it. Then, if some of the pro players settled in Little Rock, they might even coach little league teams -- saving the kids, and their dads, from miserable losing road trips.
"That was just kind of my goal," he said.
Arkansas hadn't had a professional soccer team since the Arkansas A's of the United States Interregional Soccer League folded in 1995. Major League Soccer wouldn't be founded until 1996, and the Arkansas Activities Association wouldn't hold high school state championships until 1998.
Will Montgomery, a former A's player, said there wasn't much interest in soccer until the success of the MLS and the U.S. men's and women's national teams at the World Cup.
"Then you have the growth of the sport," said Montgomery, 47, who is the head coach of the Rangers.
Professional soccer teams expanded across the country. The MLS grew from 10 teams in 1996 to 22 teams by 2017. Lower division leagues such as the National Premier Soccer League, North American Soccer League and United Soccer League began to pepper markets in every region.
But not in Arkansas.
Wardlaw, who runs an audiometrics company with his wife, looked into several leagues knowing that it was only realistic for his budget to start a franchise in the lower divisions of the American soccer pyramid -- which is much like the farm system levels in baseball, except most of the teams are unaffiliated.
He settled on the NPSL, which had more than 80 teams in more than 10 conferences with a buy-in rate of $16,500 and a $6,000 yearly fee. Wardlaw, with donations from 16 family members and friends, founded the Little Rock Rangers as a nonprofit organization in October of 2015.
Now in their second season, the Rangers consistently draw more than the league's standard of 1,000 fans a game.
"Jonathan is one of our model owners," said Jef Thiffault, managing director of the NPSL. "Jonathan has met the needs of his community. He's taken it upon himself to try and grow something."
The Rangers are 2-2-2 in the Heartland Conference, and their players have visited Baseline Academy in Little Rock and Chicot Elementary School in Mabelvale this year. Some players coach with the Arkansas United and Arkansas Rush youth clubs.
"[The Rangers' presence] has phenomenal impact," said Jim Walker, executive director of the Arkansas State Soccer Association, which oversees more than 1,600 youth and adult clubs in the state. "Having the Rangers here, centrally located, in a position where we can get as many kids as possible to see games, that can only impact Arkansas soccer in a beneficial manner. It's extremely helpful to increasing awareness."
Wardlaw purchased a women's franchise in the Women's Premier Soccer League, also named the Rangers, which will start its season Thursday. He also has plans to expand soccer in the Arkansas market further.
On Jan. 7, the USL was granted status to move up from Division III status to Division II, which left the Division III section of the American soccer pyramid without a league. Essentially, American soccer doesn't have the equivalent of baseball's Class AA league, and there is a missing stage in the development of professional soccer players.
"There's certainly a gap right now," the NPSL's Thiffault said. "I know there's a few groups that are looking to fill that. If one of our teams makes that jump, we're supportive of that."
Wardlaw said some potential leagues at the Division III level have expressed interest in Little Rock. The buy-in ranges from $300,000 to $500,000, and each franchise must have an owner worth $10 million own 35 percent of the team.
"We're just not there financially," Wardlaw said. "It's going to take a wealthy soccer lover, and it may be someone out of state that would invest in us. They'd see the potential that we have with this stadium, the fan base that we're growing, that sees an opportunity here."
War Memorial Stadium also would need a structural renovation to expand the field's width 5 more yards on each side to accommodate the width of a standard soccer field. The Rangers play on the thinner, football-specific field.
The stadium's executive director, Jerry Cohen, said the Rangers will be considered in the $160,000 feasibility study the Arkansas Legislature granted the state Department of Parks and Tourism on May 17 to study future options for the stadium.
"We would have to do much more renovations to get an actual legal pitch," Cohen said. "That would be the biggest downfall to prevention of the growth of soccer in the stadium. It's also a workable and doable situation to increase the size of the field, especially if they move up in soccer divisions."
Even if Wardlaw connected a Division III franchise to Little Rock, he said he would keep the amateur Rangers intact, which could create a soccer ladder in a state where the sport hardly was supported 20 years ago.
"I'd always want to keep this amateur aspect, with all these colleges around here," Wardlaw said. "We'd just be creating a path way. You've got the little kids that may eventually play for the college teams here, play for the amateur team in the summer, then when they graduate from college, they play for the pro team. It's just a European model."
Sports on 05/24/2017