What is your origin story? When were you founded, by who, and why?
Our club was formed in 2002 by brothers Rob, Eric, and Chris Smith of Grand Island, New York. Eric and Rob are “idea people”. They had a vision for a vertically-integrated club with a semi-pro team, amateur adult teams, and youth teams coached by our players. They got the ball rolling in fall 2002 by starting a team in the fall season of the Buffalo and District Soccer League. They filled the roster by advertising for players on the old Big Soccer forums. That’s how they cast a large net and found players from around the metro area, including one guy who drove an hour in from Rochester. They also started an intramural team at the University at Buffalo – that’s how they found me. I had recently moved back to Buffalo after graduating from Northeastern University in Boston and I was looking to get on a team and meet some people. One day early in my first semester of grad school I passed one of those bulletin boards covered with flyers, the kind you walk by all the time and probably don’t give much attention to. Except for some reason I noticed their flyer looking for players for intramurals and I went to the first practice. We had a wide mix of guys for that season of intramurals, but they asked some of us to play indoors with them down at Sahlens Sports Park in Elma, NY. I pulled in my brother and a couple of his friends. After that first BDSL summer season (2003) we had so many people we split into two teams for 2004, the Reds and the Blues. Managing expectations, and the dynamics of a club with two teams, was a challenge. I wonder if it is for other groups too. At the time I didn’t appreciate this, but I think that to keep those connected you have to have some kind of over-arching leadership. Someone, or some accepted group, that can see the big picture and make decisions. I ran the Blues for a few years, then came back to the Reds. The Reds moved forward to a degree; the Blues soldiered on; gradually, we lost touch with each other. After a year or two, there are so many people that don’t know each other. One could reasonably say our finest day was in August 2010 when the Blues won Division 3 and the Reds won Division 2. The Blues disbanded a few years later as the guys running it didn’t want to keep it up – I think that’s a common reason why teams fold. You can always find more people to play – finding people to run things, to be responsible for collecting money, getting fields and paperwork arranged, ordering jerseys, that’s not as easy. We’ve started thinking about fielding another WNY United team in the BDSL’s Over-35 division in the coming years. We still field a co-ed team at Sahlens every Thursday night from September through April, we’ve consumed an amazing amount of wings and beer over the past 2 decades after those.

Sometimes I wonder if we lack a forward vision beyond this week or this season. I’ve come to admire the people who have a vision for what they imagine things could be. Our founders had big ideas, while I suppose I’m more of a day-to-day manager. I don’t know where this goes in the future, and frankly I’m okay with that. We’ll be what we are. Usually it’s more than enough work just to put things together for this week, much less years down the line.

What city or community do you live in? Do you connect with your community outside of soccer and if not, if money and time weren't an issue, how would you?
We’re generally based in Buffalo, NY. Personally I live in Kenmore, which is the first suburb north of the city; our players come from all over the metro area. Our home field has shifted over time, based on what our connections were. Our original field was behind Hillview Elementary in Lancaster, east of the city – it featured a slight uphill/downhill factor that you had to account for in the coin flip. We moved on to play several years at UB’s Rotary Field on the South Campus in Buffalo, which was the old varsity football field back in the 1960’s. After UB decided not to rent facilities out anymore, we were able to play at Fireman’s Park in Depew. In 2021 we made the move over to the West Seneca Soccer Complex.

Community connections – we come from all walks of life. Buffalo is the kind of place that’s big enough to have an NFL team but small enough where you run into someone you know everywhere you go. Even just in my workplace, the son of one of my co-workers played for the top team in the Premier division, so he would stop by every Monday to hear the latest talk around the league. Our league has a good working relationship with the FC Buffalo organization. We have a large presence on twitter (with several pundit sites independent of the league), and we even get coverage in the Buffalo News. Personally, I also coach u11’s with Kenmore Soccer Club and I also help coach with a women’s team, in addition to being the BDSL vice president for the past 10 years. In addition, the BDSL partnered this spring with FC Buffalo and the local Ukrainian community to raise money for those affected by the war there, through a day of exhibition games. I feel like there are more symbiotic connections, and more common infrastructure, between the various soccer entities in Buffalo and WNY than ever.

Where do your players come from; college players? Local talent? Blue collar dudes blowing off steam on the weekend?
Over the years, I tell people that I want people who know what they’re doing out there; people who are ‘good teammates’ – they get along with everyone else, they show up, they pay their dues; and overall, people who love to play soccer. If you get people like this, you’ll get a group that fights hard for each other, one where you don’t have to beg people to show up. We’ve always tried to pick up players based on referrals from teammates, friends, and contacts around the local soccer scene. At the same time, I’ve always had room for a free agent or two – I never forgot that’s how I got started again here. Those guys are really motivated to meet people and be part of a group. We have (and have had) current and former college players all the way to guys like me who only played one year of high school, but love to play and never stopped improving. We encourage the social side of our team – we hang around after every game with a cooler (we proudly say we were unbeaten over the past 20 years at post-gaming), plus we’ll get together to watch US national team games. I want to believe in the end this is about people – getting good people, keeping friendships around the soccer community, building a good reputation – these are important to us.

Currently, you're listed in the BDSL Div 3; but have been promoted to Div 2 twice - what will it take to get back there and maybe even push for Division 1?
The BDSL has experienced steady growth over the past 20 years. When we started, there were only 3 divisions of around 10 teams each. Now we’re up to 65 teams over 6 divisions, plus 12 teams in an over-35 division. The standard of play has gone up significantly over that period of time as well. Several years back the league earned USASA ‘Elite League’ status. All of this is a source of pride for us – for a metro area of around 1 million people, we feel we punch way above our weight compared to others much larger than us. So much of that has come down to the vision of league presidents like Mike Schieber and Bryan Staniszewski. Anyway, over those years we’ve only been relegated once – every other time, it was a matter of the divisions splitting. By 2010 there were 5 divisions – we won the 2010 title, spent two seasons in D1, were relegated for the 2013 season, and were in D2 till last year. D2 was a massive 24-team two-conference division last year and for this year the league split that in two, thus why we went “down” to D3.

What will it take to get promoted? D3 is really interesting this year because there’s a lot of parity between the teams. There is only one new team in there and they’re not much different – so that means it’s a competition between some similarly matched squads from the bottom half of D2 last year. We played solid ball last year, possessed well and played good defense, but we couldn’t score. I added a couple attackers for this summer and even with some injuries already, if we can score some goals I think we have a good chance of making the playoffs. I don’t have a grand vision for where we ‘need’ to be – we’ll play at whatever level we earn, up or down. I want to play good soccer with good people – if we do things right, the results should be a consequence of that. I’d love to play some games down the stretch where we’re looking for a playoff spot rather than staving off relegation. I’d love to play some playoff games with nothing to lose and everything to gain. That’s a plan for right now. In general, we have to keep finding players that raise our level of play (I keep joking that I’ve been recruiting myself out of the lineup!) – which can be a challenge, because higher division teams draw more interest from people.

How is the team funded? Completely out of pocket; do you have sponsors? Do you sell merch like scarves or kits?
Funding – we’ve never had sponsors. We’ve looked into having a fundraiser a few times, but from what I can tell, most of those don’t make much money. I’ve made an effort over the years to keep costs down as much as possible. We split up the costs equally and everyone pays their share. I’ve always been skeptical of sponsors – what would they want in return? Is it a commitment we could uphold? I hate being beholden to anyone.

Merch – hmm, sometimes I think about that, but I wonder who would really want to buy any! I’ve struggled enough over the years with getting orders right with screen printers. We’ve tried to do some little things besides just our uniforms – sweatshirts, flags, a banner to display at the games this year. A few teams in the BDSL sell stuff on the side – Great White Buffalo, Olean (who had a merchandise stand at their game last time we went there).

Surely you have a rival - who are your biggest matchups and who do you love to play against?
Rivals – we’ve been around a long time, and frankly we’ve outlasted a lot of the teams we considered rivals over the years. We had some battles with the original Depew team when we started, as well as Ukraine back in the day. Ukraine still plays, but none of those guys are involved anymore. There are some teams I’d love to finally get a result against, but I don’t know if anyone would consider us ‘rivals’ – that would require some give and take. We have a range of relationships with teams who have split off from us over the years – some we never got to play at all because they played at higher levels; sometimes the split was friendly, such as with Depew Village or Honey Badgers. I’d like to think we have more friends than rivals these days. Between teams that split off, and players that have moved on, plus referees we know, it’s nice to see a friendly face almost everywhere we go. As league VP, I hesitate to name any teams we don’t like.

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