USL Focus Part V: Real Maryland hoping to find rhythm in year two

By: Charles Boehm, Potomac Soccer Wire Sr. Staff Writer
 
David Noyes had heard the scuttlebutt about Real Maryland last year. As a member of the Carolina Railhawks technical staff, he’d picked up on the rumors of struggle and discontent emanating from one of the United Soccer Leagues’ newest clubs, a side which was stumbling towards the basement of the second division when the two teams met in the second round of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup on Railhawks turf late last June.
 
But the rumors didn’t jibe with what he saw with his own eyes that night. Real hadn’t won a league match in a month and wouldn’t win another one all season, but they gave their first-division elders all they could handle and it took a last-gasp penalty kick to book Carolina’s place in the next round.
 
“They almost beat us,” he recalled in an interview earlier this month. “I had heard things, but what I had heard didn’t stack up against the way they played. They played very well, and caught my attention.”
 
By the end of the campaign, Real’s owners were ready to bring in new leadership with a fresh perspective; Noyes and his wife, a Washington-area native, have myriad local ties. So one thing led to another and in late September the Boston-born Noyes was named general manager, tasked with leading the young club to greener pastures in its second season of existence.
 
It’s no small challenge. Real Maryland must build a much more competitive squad in 2009 and broaden the size and scope of their fledgling fan base without alienating the Latino supporters who were their most devoted constituency in year one – and at the same time, quickly adapt to a new home, Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville.
 
Club officials are clearly excited about the move, which places the Monarchs in the midst of the emerging urban corridor along Rockville Pike, offering Metro access and plentiful shopping and dining options in sharp contrast to the relative remoteness of their former abode in Germantown’s Maryland Soccerplex.
 
“There’s a lot of things to do down there. We want to be another thing to do in that area, and then they get to enjoy those other things, whether it’s before or after,” explained Noyes. “There’s a million things out there.”
 
Real has signed a five-year contract to utilize Richard Montgomery’s facilities, recently upgraded to the tune of $90 million, and players and coaches hope to build stability in the cozy stadium and its all-weather synthetic surface (more on that surface later).
 
“The facility’s fantastic,” said new head coach Anthony Hudson. “I’m pretty sure it’s going to be one of the best in the league, they way it’s designed. It’s going to be a very supporter-friendly, player-friendly environment.”
 
Real is also working hard to prove itself a responsible member of the local community, having established a partnership with the Children’s Miracle Fund and expanded on its series of youth soccer camps. But while the relocation to Rockville represents a vital opportunity to connect with the soccer-savvy populations of Washington’s inner suburbs, it also plunks Real into a more crowded entertainment market even as an ongoing economic downturn poses a stiff headwind for any enterprise.
 
The club already faces strong competition for the disposable income of local residents, with no shortage of theaters, live music venues and competing sports events nearby, not to mention Major League Soccer giants D.C. United across town at RFK Stadium – and in times like these, sponsorship dollars can prove even harder to snare.
 
“You would think that local business would support something like this,” said Real owner Victor Moran. “Well, they all had the perfect excuse last year and I’m sure they will all have the perfect one upcoming next season, which is the market not going great. I’m sure all the sports and entertainment industry is going to suffer a lot with this situation that we have financially in the United States.”
 
Explaining their place in U.S. professional soccer’s multi-tiered structure (the club plays in USL-2, two rungs below United and the rest of MLS) is an undertaking in and of itself. But Real’s greatest test lies in the need to appeal to family audiences while retaining some allure for soccer purists, many of whom already bear strong allegiances to leagues and clubs in foreign lands. And how many of those purists might be turned off by the mere thought of minor-league soccer on artificial turf?
 
With the extreme summer weather of 2008 still fresh in mind, Moran, Noyes and company have decided that the importance of a consistent match and training schedule on a reliable surface outweighs such concerns. But a consistent product between the lines is only one aspect of Real’s offering: in molding the match day atmosphere, Noyes will look to borrow a page or two from his former club.
 
“[Carolina] were very pro-active in their game days,” he said. “It was a very energetic environment. Some people questioned – the purists – whether maybe it could be a little less announcements and music and throwing t-shirts in and stuff like that, but it’s also about an inexpensive form of family entertainment. We love soccer and I’m a purist – I love the game and if it’s not pretty I get upset. But there’s also the experience.”
 
Noyes and his cohorts are also focused on Real’s other positive aspects. The Monarchs’ Super 20 side performed well last year, falling just short of a national title, and the club’s youth setup has duly grown with Super Y League teams coming online at the U17, U16 & U15 levels.
 
Hudson’s rapid progress has turned heads in USL circles, with league president Francisco Marcos tagging him as “one of the best up-and-coming young coaches in the game.” The 27-year-old Englishman sounds eager to tap into the area’s deep-rooted soccer culture – especially the skillful products of Washington’s burgeoning Latino communities, where talented youth are bypassed with depressing regularity thanks to the pricey norms of the area’s club establishment.
 
“In youth soccer, you very rarely see players from poorer communities. You very rarely see them playing at decent levels in these academies, because they can’t afford to play,” noted Hudson. “That’s always bothered me. So now here we can really look at every player from every community, wherever they’re from. If a player’s good enough, it doesn’t matter where they’re from. We want them to play…there’s some fantastic talent around here.”
 
Moran acknowledges that financial prosperity remains a distant goal for his club – “it’s going to take three, four or five years to really see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he estimates – but he maintains that his commitment to the project never wavered, even in the darkest hours of 2008. Community outreach and competitiveness on the field will remain the focus as Real Maryland enters its second year, and the club also hopes to ride the coattails of USL’s growing visibility at large.
 
“They’re slowly adding the pieces,” said Noyes of the league’s progress. “It’s a model that hopefully I can put in on a smaller scale here: put that in place, and then you grow. And if you grow properly and you put on a decent product and show that you care, the people will come.”

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Editor's Note - enjoy all the stories in this series:
Thriving in the shadows: The survival, and success, of the United Soccer Leagues
USL Focus Part I: DC United exes find greener pastures in Vancouver
USL Focus Part II: Season of success cues bullish outlook
USL Focus Part III: MLS expansion leaves United Soccer Leagues wary
USL Focus Part IV: Real Maryland looks to move past growing pains
USL Focus Part V: Real Maryland hoping to find rhythm in year two
USL Focus Part VI: Super Y-League provides foundation for USL’s “pyramid”


Charles Boehm has covered D.C. United and the rest of the Washington-area soccer world for more than four years. A native of Dallas, Texas, Charlie made D.C. his home following a hard-working -- but hardly spectacular -- NCAA Division III college career and subsequent Peace Corps stint in the small, soccer-crazed, island nation of Grenada, where he also coached and played in the Grenadian Premier League (such as it is). He welcomes feedback at cboehm@potomacsoccerwire.com.