Sarasota Paradise soccer team scores on and off field in first home game

There's officially a new team in town. 

The Sarasota Paradise, a "pre-professional" soccer team that plays in the United Soccer League's League Two, began play in its first season in May, but hosted its first home game against FC Miami City on June 3 at Sarasota High. I was intrigued by what the experience might be like, so I attended. 

I didn't know what I would find. I've been to a handful of semi-pro games in the past, and they are typically low-key affairs put on with minimum effort or care. But I had a feeling this would be different. The support the team receives from the USL helps, of course, but the team also just seems better run than most other teams of their ilk. They had a plan from the start and marketed themselves well. That afternoon, the Paradise tweeted that approximately 500 people had been ticketed for the game. The number made sense to me, but you never know how many people will actually show up, or when they will arrive. 

When I got to the stadium about 30 minutes before the game, there was a line of people waiting to get inside, stretching from the stadium gate almost to the Sarasota Art Museum entrance corridor. As the game got underway, more and more people filed into the stadium. After the game, the team tweeted that with walk-up ticket sales, the total number of attendees came out to 617. That matches what my eyes saw: the bleachers at Sarasota High were not 100% filled, but for an inaugural game of a pre-professional soccer team, it was a good start. 

Courtesy photo

There were a few people in Paradise gear, but most people in attendance were families, and the kids in those families were wearing their own youth soccer jerseys. It made sense: the Paradise advertised the evening as Youth Soccer Appreciation Night. Members of Braden River Soccer Club even served as the game's ball boys, assisting the players and referees with keeping the game moving. Some people were also there for the curiosity of it: one woman, for instance, walked up to me during the first half with a simple question. 

"Is the home team the one wearing black or white?" she said. "I don't want to be embarrassed." 

The Paradise wore black, for the record, a sharp look accented with shades of pink-orange and sea green. But more important than the crowd size or what people were wearing is what people were feeling. Based on the sounds the crowd made, the people were feeling a lot, and for good reason: the Paradise played a heck of a game. 

It didn't start particularly well, as FC Miami City got on the board via penalty kick less than four minutes into the game and threatened to add another. But as the first half went on, things changed. Instead of playing on their heels, the Paradise players took the action to Miami City and controlled possession of the ball. Then, about midway through the half, the Paradise made all that time of possession count. Felipe Rojas, a University of Central Florida grad who has lived in Sarasota since he was 5, received a cross from a teammate and buried a header past the Miami City goalie on the right side of the net. It was the first goal of the game, but also the first goal in team history; the Paradise was shut out 1-0 in each of its first two games. 

There's video of the play on the team's Instagram account. In it, you can hear how loud the crowd gets for players most of them know little about. The crowd would roar even louder a few minutes later, when the aptly-named Peekay Stoffle, a Barry University grad from Miami, smashed a PK through the heart of the net to give the Paradise a 2-1 lead. He celebrated with a group hug and a finger pointing to his head, as if to say he (and his teammates) know what they're doing. 

The same could be said of the organization as a whole. It was only one game, but it was impressive to see how the team translated its marketing efforts into having fans care about the team this early. They were rewarded with a fun game that saw the Paradise hang on for a 2-1 win, in no small part thanks to goalkeeper Charlie Farrar, a University of North Carolina-Asheville grad, who kept Miami City off the scoresheet when it pressured the Paradise in the second half. 

That's not to say there were no hiccups. The audio experience, in particular, was messy, as pregame music was interrupted by what sounded like a phone alarm for several seconds. The same thing happened during the national anthem — then, once the anthem was finished, it started again, playing about halfway through, until someone cut it off. And at the beginning of the second half, Zac Brown Band's "Chicken Fried" welcomed players back to the pitch, but it continued to blare from the speakers as play got underway. 

File photo

But those are issues that are easily fixed. What's important is that, unlike other pre- or semi-professional teams that have tried to become a fixture in Sarasota, the Paradise seems to have succeeded in convincing a portion of the soccer community to support the club. It was something that club founder Marcus Walfridson stressed during the club's launch event in November.

"What is Sarasota?" Walfridson said during that event. "It is beautiful. There are a lot of awesome people. A lot of art, a lot of culture. Those are good things. But I've been looking for the identity. I think we as a club, all of us here, can help form the identity. We can make it possible for people who move to Sarasota to come to our games, put up a scarf and say, 'We are Sarasotans.'"

Time will tell if the fans continue to be there game after game, or if they'll buy tons of merch and rep the team on the streets or at parties, spreading the word in the process. But at least for one night, everyone at Sarasota High was proud to call their Paradise their own team, and that's something.