FORT WAYNE SOCCER HISTORY, PART II

For decades, the Fort Wayne Sport Club was the city's primary soccer outlet, but in the 1980s, the sport took a bold new turn with the arrival of the fast-paced, high-scoring indoor game. The Fort Wayne Flames brought professional soccer to the city in 1986 as an expansion franchise in the American Indoor Soccer Association (AISA). Playing at the iconic Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, the team was founded by a group of investors and quickly hired former Seattle Sounders goalkeeper Cliff Brown as their first head coach.

The Flames' three-season tenure (1986-1989) was a rollercoaster of on-field struggles and off-field financial challenges. The inaugural season was particularly difficult, with a head coach fired just five games in and the team finishing with a 13-29 record. Despite attracting the league's fourth-best attendance, the club folded at the end of the season due to financial losses. It was quickly resurrected by new owners for the 1987-88 season.

The team’s most memorable moment came at the end of the 1988 season with a new league-wide tournament called the "Challenge Cup." Despite a mediocre regular season, the Flames caught fire in the tournament, making an improbable run to the final. On April 1, 1988, they hosted the championship match against the Canton Invaders. A crowd of over 8,000—the team's largest ever—packed the Coliseum to witness a thrilling, back-and-forth game that ended in a heartbreaking 5-4 defeat. The next season, the Flames improved to a .500 record but missed the playoffs. Financial problems resurfaced, and the team folded for good in 1989. While the Flames' stay was brief, their high-energy brand of indoor soccer and the passionate support they generated for the Challenge Cup final proved, unequivocally, that Fort Wayne had a place for professional soccer and was ready to embrace it.