by The Crunch was unable to win the championship in each of the following two seasons. They did return to the championship series at the end of the 1998 – 99 season against the St. Louis Ambush. The series proved to be just as dramatic as years earlier when these two teams battled for the championship.
After a hard fought series, the Crunch once again won the NPSL championship trophy. Hector tells what contributed to the Crunch’s long run of success in the 1990’s, “The owner of the Crunch, George Hoffman, along with the general manager, Al Miller, did a great job putting the teams together. Al Miller did a great job bringing in the pieces that we needed while keeping the core players together. George Hoffman was never shy from giving Miller the needed finances to build the winner and sustain it. It is never easy to repeat as a champion, I played twenty one seasons and only won three championships, so there was eighteen seasons when the last game was a loss.
Once you taste that first championship, it is easy to stay motivated because you want it again. The feeling of hoisting the trophy with the crowd going crazy is incredible. The great thing was that all three championships we won at home. It was always great to celebrate with all the fans. The soccer fans in Cleveland are a lot of great people that have been around for a long time, it was great to share it with them.”
Otto also explained the differences between the two coaches, “Gary was very much a perfectionist with the philosophy that indoor soccer is an unpredictable game, so we needed to master all the predictable parts of the game. We worked hard on special teams all the time, such as power play and penalty kill situations. We scored a lot of our goals on free kicks, so this was also drilled relentlessly under Gary at practice. Gary had bonus systems set up for how we did in certain situations. His whole system of coaching was disciplined and organized. Gary wanted to become the general manager after the first few years of great success, because we already had Al Miller in place, it was time for Gary and the Crunch to part ways.
Bruce Miller had stepped in next; he was good friends with Hector. He was a different kind of coach as he let the leaders of the team, lead the team. He spent his time trying to work more with the younger players in perfecting their roles. As far as I went, it was difficult at times because Gary coached with a lot of discipline and made each player responsible. As Bruce coached, the discipline started to erode away as he was more of a player’s coach.
As we got older, the discipline that we were lacking started to show. It was just the way I saw the game. I yelled at a lot of players, because it was difficult on me as the last line of defense, if someone blew their assignment. I was willing to do just about anything to win, so when I needed to yell at younger players or whomever I didn’t hesitate. We had Andy Schmetzer and Tommy Tanner playing their tails off on defense helping me out, with Hector and Zoran downfield scoring goals, so the system did work.”
Zoran also expresses what it was like to play for Gary Hindley and then switching to Bruce Miller, “They were both good coaches and good people. Bruce was more of a player’s coach and was totally behind myself and Hector, even asking for advice at certain times. Bruce Miller made us feel very important. I give Bruce a lot of credit, because it wasn’t easy coaching me because I’m very competitive and want to do a lot of stuff my way.”
Bruce Miller was able to show his incredible coaching skills keeping the team together and focused after the first championship in 1994 and then leading them to a few more during his time as coach. Bruce Miller points out what the main attributes every team should have to be successful, “I was a player’s coach with a simple philosophy. At the end of the day if everything is equal, talent will win out.
My attitude was keeping them healthy and happy. If you can keep good players happy and healthy and give them a simple framework to play in, you will be fairly successful. I found that keeping the guys on the bench happy was harder than keeping the starts. We field 11 guys at once with the 12th and 13th guy being the hardest to keep happy. We were so stacked with talent that we had guys on the bench that would start for any other team in the league. It was a 48 game season and we had our moments of things going wrong, but it was my job as the coach to solve it.”
The Crunch played for two more seasons after the NPSL switched to the MISL. At the start of the 2002-03 season in the MISL, they once again were called the Cleveland Force. But poor ownership took over and things would never be the same. The team had four different coaches after Miller left, but unfortunately, things just didn’t work out. Hindley and Miller had been amazing with their coaching skills and leadership ability during their time with the Crunch and Force. The Force would eventually fold after the 2004-05 season.
Despite the sad end to an amazing franchise, no one could ever take away the incredible memories that the team created. The combination of Marinaro, Karic, and Orf under the leadership of Hindley and Miller was a dynasty that Cleveland may never see again in any sport. It is one of the greatest stories in not only soccer, but in any major professional sport. The Brazilians can tell their children about the glory years of Pele, Cleveland fans lucky enough to see it, can tell their children about the dynasty that was Marinaro, Karic and Orf.
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