NPSL has found a new home in Wilmington, Delaware. The 2020 season will see the debut of First State FC Midnight Riders, the newest club to join the Keystone Conference in NPSL’s Northeast Region. Majority owner Dave Holloway wears multiple hats for the new club, serving as President and General Manager. With all that going on, Dave graciously gave us a few minutes to talk about his club.

Why did you decide that now was the time to start a soccer club?

I had been looking for ways to weave sports (my lifelong passion) into my professional life (I'm a lawyer - which, yes, can be boring). We originally set out to get involved with some sort of youth soccer non-profit, perhaps even at the national policy level. And it was in that digging that we came across lower level soccer leagues that were actively looking for expansion markets. So after some discussions and number crunching, we thought maybe we really could bring a team to Delaware. Then (like a number of other NPSL owners), I somehow came across Dennis Crowley's blog posts about starting an NPSL team. Reading his thoughts about soccer (about what it should be in this country and how we should make it happen) felt like I was reading my own thoughts written out on the screen in front of me. From that moment on we started to hone in on the NPSL as a potential landing spot for this new team.

What is your own soccer background? How did you come to love the sport?

I played competitively up until I was about 16, when I decided to quit and focus on baseball. This was dumb (not because I was better at soccer or liked it more - I was actually much better at baseball and would go on to be recruited to a number of D1 schools for it) - it was dumb because if 16 year old me could see the current version of me, he'd see a guy who lives and breathes soccer, not baseball. (In all fairness, it was probably the nonstop competitive grind that probably soured me on baseball.) As a sport, soccer could not be any more different from baseball. There's constant motion, the ball is always in play, and the team movements are perpetual/ongoing (there's a reason they call it the beautiful game...), not turn-based like baseball. But in any event, I fell back in love with soccer in college, and played in leagues nearly every year thereafter.

It's also by far my father's favorite sport, so it was easier to watch games and stay on top of the sport if someone else in the house was interested too.

In any event, I've been a diehard soccer fan (and Arsenal supporter) for the best part of the last 20 years.

What has been the response so far in the Wilmington area since the official announcement?

Nothing short of fantastic. In the first week of our launch we got many, many messages asking about tryouts, friendly banter from other teams on Twitter, people asking us if they could work for us, volunteer for us - you name it, really. It's been great to see, but it hasn't been totally out of the blue. During all the months that we were working on getting this thing off the ground, I would often test the waters with people in the community - take the temperature for this idea - and it was always met with enthusiasm. So we had a feeling that people would support this, but of course it's great to see when it finally happens.

Having said all that, we know we still have plenty of work to do. We still need to get out there and engage and let people know who we are and what we're doing, and that work will probably never stop.

Have you secured a place to play for the 2020 season? What has that process been like?

I'll tell you the process has been difficult. One of the most challenging factors has been the fact that every grass field in the area gets shut down over the summer so it can recover in time for the fall sports season. Add on to that renovations schedules, parking and restroom issues, and NPSL league requirements, and it can make for some tough sledding in finding the right place. However, there are some exceptional soccer facilities in the area and we're excited about giving our players and our fans a great experience this upcoming summer.

Talk about Chibsah Faisal, you team's first head coach.

We knew Chibsah was the man for us after grabbing one cup of coffee with him down in Newark this past summer. As a former Division I player and current Division I coach, he obviously knows his fundamentals. But perhaps more importantly, he brings the vision and temperament that every team wants in a leader and head coach. He knows what he wants, he has a philosophy that he believes in, and he's cool under pressure. He is also as dedicated as we are to making sure that First State FC is a valuable community partner. He will be a great ambassador for our club.

Obviously you need players. What's your philosophy for putting together the team's initial roster?

That's the great thing about being able to land a college coach – Coach Chibsah and his staff are essentially recruiting 24/7 anyway, so they're already familiar with all the colleges, high schools, and youth programs in really the entire mid-Atlantic. And being from Ghana, Coach Chibsah also has a deep international network for talent searching.

Aside from our coaching staff recruiting, we're also already getting tons of emails and inquiries from players across the country who are looking for a place to play next summer: NCAA players (from Division I down to JUCO's), players who played professionally overseas, and even NPSL players looking for a new team. We're already sifting through inquiries and tryout videos, and it's only been two weeks!

Finally, we will be having open tryouts (official announcement to come sometime in the coming weeks), so that anyone who wants to represent Delaware in the NPSL can come show us what they got.

Have other teams in your division reached out to you? Any good chatter going on there?

Yes, we had a few teams reach out to welcome us, both personally and through official team channels. The Northeast Division really is full of a bunch of really well-run clubs, so I consider us lucky to be able to be able to compete against these guys. Luckily for us, the NPSL announced us right before the Annual Owners Meeting, so we were able to meet all our local teams in person shortly after we were announced.

Do you see your club launching a women's team in the future?

Absolutely. In fact, at the Owner's Meetings we had talks about this very subject with some of the owners of other women's teams in the region. We need to figure out which end is up in 2020 and get our feet underneath us, but a women's team will be pretty high on our priority list moving forward.

What ideas for community outreach do you have?

We have a running list of ways to make sure that we are using this organization and this sport to effect positive change in our community:

- Some of them will be soccer related - think specialized youth clinics, soccer related street competitions, partnering with nationwide organizations that focus on sports in urban environments, etc.

- Some of our initiatives and programs will be quasi-soccer related - think competitions and tournaments sponsored by the team but not necessarily involving soccer.

- And then some of our outreach programs will be totally separate from the sport - think more traditional volunteer and charity work.

What would you consider a successful first season?

Obviously on-field success is more easily quantifiable - our goal for the 2020 season is to win our conference and qualify for the Regional four-team playoff. Perhaps more important, though, are the strides that we will be making to embed ourselves in the fabric of our community. This is, of course, harder to measure. But generally speaking, if at the end of the season we've created a vibrant environment for soccer fans, a great summer night out for the family, and an organization that is consistently out doing good works in the community to make this state a better place to live, then we will have had a successful season.