Professional soccer returns to Louisville for the first time in 22 years.
The Louisville Lightning will kick-off their 1st season in the Professional Arena Soccer League this Friday against Cincinnati.
The teams name was chosen to honor the city’s original indoor professional team The Louisville Thunder which played from 1984-1987. The new founders say this has been an idea for a while, but everything started to fall into place this summer.
“This summer we got together and decided we were going to do it so really in the last 14 weeks this whole thing was born and in the last 14 weeks we've built the program from the ground up,” said David Horne, GM and player.
“We've tried very hard to bring an outdoor professional team to Louisville but a lack of quality fields and a lack of a venue to play outdoors and resulted in us looking indoors at this venue and seeing what interest we have in the community. This probably won't be the last stop we will probably look to go outdoors if we get a good response to the PASL here,” Wayne Estopinal, Co-owner of Louisville Lightning.
One of the team's biggest tasks was putting together a competitive squad in such a short time.
The Louisville Lightning held open tryouts this fall and signed several local players.
Horne said, “we have guys from St. X, Trinity, Manual, Ballard, guys who went to UK, U of L, Center College, and Transylvania in addition we imported some professionals.”
Although the process has been fast, the team says they are ready for go. For the first time in 22 years, professional soccer is back in Louisville.
“This is a very fast pace game its much like pinball soccer I call it. A lot of boarding a lot of scoring so I think the fans will really enjoy it plus they'll know a lot of them,” said Estopinal.
For tickets call 502-727.9070.or visit LouisvilleLightning.com
