by Cleveland Crunches the Drought!
From the book, “Cleveland’s Finest” by Vince McKee
Our family wasn’t blessed with much money despite having two working parents. But, with what little extra money my parents had, they would take us to the Richfield Coliseum to see the Cleveland Force soccer team. They wore solid yellows jerseys with a white stripe across the chest with the team name.
They also wore dark powder blue jerseys of the same design. They had great talent on the field combined with unique names such as PJ Johns and Ali Kazemaini. Who could forget our star players Kai Haaskivi and Benny Dargle or even our arch nemesis opponent, Tatu.
The Cleveland Force was a charter member of the Major Indoor Soccer League, known as the MISL, with five other teams. The inaugural season for the league was 1978 – 1979. The original owner, Eric Henderson, quickly sold the team to Bart Wolstein. The team was named after the fictional and mystical force used in the Star Wars movies.
Our family would go to the games as often as we could and many times my Dad was lucky enough to score us free tickets. At halftime of each game, my brother, Don, and I would take a little orange soccer ball and kick it around the top of the arena, above our seats, until the game was ready to resume. The Force also had a deal with O’ Henry candy bars and they would toss them out to the fans in the crowd. It was a fun atmosphere that packed in entertainment for the entire family.
Over the next few years, the team kept improving. Bernie James won Defender of the Year in 1983. Then two years later in 1985, Ali Kazemaini won Rookie of the Year. Two years later, his new teammate, John Stollmeyer, was given the same award. The team was led by Kai Haaskivi in the late 1980’s who could seemingly find the goal in his sleep.
The key addition for the Force was the hiring of new head coach, Timo Liekoski, for the 1982 season. The team started to win more often even winning the Eastern Conference Championship for both the 85-86 and the 86-87 seasons. In the 1987 – 1988 season, they made it to the championship series against the San Diego Sockers. Unfortunately for Cleveland fans, they saw their team swept by the high powered San Diego team who had won their seventh championship in the league’s fourteen year existence.
The owner of the Force, Mr. Wolstein, decided to fold the team shortly after getting swept in the 1988 championship series, despite the high level of success that they had been experiencing at the Richfield Coliseum. It came as a shock to many fans as indoor soccer was staring to catch on in northeast Ohio.
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