by Mike Bailey
A pre-professional soccer team is coming to Peoria with the financial help of entrepreneur and philanthropist Kim Blickenstaff, who over the last year has launched multiple developments across the Peoria area.
Peoria City is to join the United Soccer League Two, with the goal of developing talent to play professionally, at the USL level and beyond. The addition of basically minor league level soccer to Peoria’s sports portfolio is an excellent complement to a community that already hosts professional baseball, hockey, Division 1 college athletics including NCAA men’s and women’s basketball, and multiple Illinois high school state championship tourneys.
Blickenstaff will join Bradley University men’s soccer coach Jim DeRose at a press conference at 3 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30, at The Betty Jayne Brimmer Center for the Performing Arts – another Blickenstaff project – at 1327 E. Kelly Ave., Peoria Heights. DeRose was instrumental in bringing the team here and will hold a front office position.
The team will play at Bradley University’s Shea Stadium, 1323 W. Nebraska Ave. in Peoria, with its home debut on May 23. In all the team will play 14 games between May 9 and July 12, half of those at home. Peoria City enters USL Two’s Heartland Division with teams representing Chicago, St. Louis, Des Moines, Kansas City, Green Bay and Canada (Manitoba and Thunder Bay).
The team, stocked primarily with college players, will be coached by BU soccer Assistant Coach Tim Regan, who played at BU, in this USL League and ultimately in Major League Soccer. NCAA rules prevent any BU soccer players from being on the team. The players may receive limited support for basic living expenses, but otherwise will not be paid, so as to retain their amateur eligibility status.
Blickenstaff said he was approached by DeRose through a mutual acquaintance about investing in the team three months ago. Describing Peoria as a “soccer hotbed” that consistently produces college-level players, he said he “looked at the economics of it” and decided it was a go with the ownership team of Barry MacLean and John Dorn.
Blickenstaff has long been a soccer fan, though he didn’t grow up playing the sport.
“There wasn’t soccer then. My son David was a player competitively, so I learned soccer,” he said. “I got into it. It’s thrilling … When your son is involved, you get addicted.
“How fun to have a league where some of our homegrown kids are playing,” he said. “You could end up seeing our kids playing in the MLS.”
That’s not a stretch, as some 70 percent of all selections in the MLS SuperDraft since 2010 have played in this developmental league, which USL labels “the elite pre-professional tier in North American soccer.”
DeRose, Bradley’s storied soccer coach for the last 24 years, said his job was “just to connect the dots” between the owners and local leadership. He describes the league as “elite amateur summer play” similar to baseball’s Cape Cod League. It will operate in a window that doesn’t detract from other local sports ventures “at one of the premier soccer venues in all of the country.”
“To be honest, if you look at Peoria as a city and market, we’re one of the last … in the Midwest that didn’t have” this level of soccer play, said DeRose, himself a Soccer America National Coach of the Year (2007) who has mentored multiple All-Americans and future pros.
“Kim and I have a shared vision of what we want and what we don’t want,” he said. It’s about player development, to be sure, but “for us it’s about a fan experience” with an eye on affordability, growing a spectator base across all economic levels, and providing entertainment activities that go beyond the game itself.
Follow the team online at www.PeoriaCitySoccer.com, on Facebook (/peoriacitysoccer), on Instagram (@peoriacitysoccer), and Twitter (@PeoriaCityUSL2).