It's All Coming Together: Fort Wayne FC's First Home Stand

Fort Wayne Football Club’s recent home stand produced mostly highs, minimal lows, and about as many exhilarating moments as one could realistically hope for in a five game stretch with two wins, three draws, and a shootout vs a USL Championship side. Lilian Ricol’s brace against Portland was electric, Taig Healy’s four-goals-in-four-games performance was iconic, and the construction staff’s effort to open Ruoff Mortgage Stadium on May 2nd was heroic.

The beautiful thing about Fort Wayne Football Club and their new stadium – affectionately dubbed "The Ru" – is that our city finally has a soccer specific destination where fans can cheer on their home side in the flesh. It is a place we can point to, a concourse we can walk, a seat we can call our own, a soccer cathedral whose gates we can enter.

Over the course of three weeks, fans bore witness to the growth of an organism that matured with the breath of each kickoff. The parking situation improved, the gate entry flow improved, the merchandise shop setup improved, and the local traffic improved in a roundabout sort of way. The number of concession stand locations increased to the point where the beer cans looked taller and the Dippin’ Dots looked tastier.

The product on the field has also been quality, with two clean sheets for Bernd Schipmann, an extra-time equalizer by Jack Thomas, and an impressive number of minutes for Michael Rempel, JP Jordan, and Tiago Dias. We witnessed Emerson Nieto’s first professional start, saw Aurie Echevarria, Clarence Awoudor, and Reid Sproat return to the starting XI, and Tyson Hagaman and Nico Burns making the match-day roster.

The team has not been shut out in a home match either. Goals were netted by aforementioned Healy, Ricol, and Thomas, but Tiago Dias also tallied his first professional goal in the match against Corpus Christi. Many of the team's goals have been registered in front of our supporter section, The Hive, proving that scoring is a group effort and smoking on stadium grounds is permitted as long as it is of the Autumn Gold variety.

There is an uplifting sense of community within the confines. The number of familiar faces I ran into at the games I attended was astounding. People from my past, people from my present, and people I have yet to meet but will experience games with in the future. Among those faces was someone I had not seen in several years and they remarked, "What a small world!" But I thought to myself, "Is it really?" Most of us have a soccer history or passion that compels us to gather at The Ru and cheer on our team, so I’m not convinced our meeting was a coincidence. Of all the times and places for us to run into each other, this was it.

In the movie Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart's character famously reacts to a happenstance reunion: “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine." But The Ru isn't a random location, this isn't a random event, and the stadium is certainly more than a soccer joint. This is THE soccer location and THE soccer event that Fort Wayne citizens are supposed to be at. It is the soccer center of gravity.

Fort Wayne Football Club will celebrate Ruoff Mortgage Stadium’s official opening on July 4th vs Spokane Velocity. The final fit, finish, and polish will have been applied throughout, and a scoreboard of historic proportions will light up the Fourth of July sky.

It only took five games, a stretch we may never see again on future schedules. From the stadium, to the team, to the supporters, and the community: it is all coming together. So as this first home stand comes to an end it isn't a goodbye, rather a see you next time around, and assuredly the beginning of a beautiful friendship.