Major Indoor Soccer League (1979-1990)
Major Soccer League (1990-1992)
National Professional Soccer League (1992-2001)
Tombstone
Born: August 21, 1979 – MISL expansion franchise
Folded: May 18, 2001
First Game: November 30, 1979 (L 6-4 vs. New York Arrows)
Last Game: April 13, 2001 (L 16-12 @ Toronto Thunderhawks)
MISL Championships: None
NPSL Championships: None
Arena
Kansas Coliseum (9,681)11999-00 Wichita Wings Media Guide
Opened: 1977
Closed: 2010
Marketing
Team Colors:
- 1987-88: Orange, Royal Blue & Gold2MISL Official Tenth Anniversary Guide 1978-1988
- 1997-98: Orange & Purple31997-98 National Professional Soccer League Official Guide & Record Book
Television:
- 1984-85: KSNW (Channel 3 – NBC)
- 1991-92: Multimedia Cablevision
Television Broadcasters:
- 1984-85: Craig Bolerjack & Steve Shaad
- 1991-92: Dave Phillips (play-by-play) & Klaus Kollmai (color)
Radio:
- 1984-85: KFH (1330 AM)
- 1987-88: KNSS (1240 AM)
- 1991-92: KZSN (1480 AM)
- 1997-98: KQAM (1480 AM)
Radio Broadcasters:
- 1984-85: Jim Hawley
- 1987-88: Dave Phillips & Mark Allan
- 1997-98: Rob “B”
Dance Team: Wichita Wings Angels
Ownership
Owners:
- 1979-1980: Bob Becker
- 1980-1986: Frank Carney, et al.
- 1986-1992: Bill Oliver, et al.
- 1992-1998: Mike Relihan, et al.
- 1998-2001: Randy Johnson & Shirley Johnson
Attendance
Wichita Wings attendance figures in the chart below represent the club’s membership in both the Major Indoor Soccer League (1979-1992) and the National Professional Soccer League (1992-2001).
Tilting your mobile device may offer better viewing.
Sources:
- 1989-90 MISL Official Guide (1979-1989 Wings & MISL figures)
- 2003-04 Dallas Sidekicks Media Guide (1989-1992 Wings & MISL/MSL figures)
- 1997-98 National Professional Soccer League Official Guide & Record Book (1992-1997 Wings and NPSL figures)
Wings Things
Wichita Wings
Orange Army T-Shirt
One of American soccer’s earliest and most effective Supporters Groups, the Orange Army helped pack the 9,600-seat Kansas Coliseum for Wichita Wings indoor games throughout the 1980’s.
The guys at Old School Shirts have worked up this eye-catching Orange Army throwback design and it’s also now available as a women’s Tank Top!
When you make a purchase through an affiliate link like this one, Fun While It Lasted earns a commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!
Background
The Wichita Wings were a box office hit whose “Orange Army” of fans packed the 9,600-seat Kansas Coliseum for indoor soccer during the early and mid-1980’s. When the Wings folded in 2001 after 22 seasons of play, it was the oldest professional soccer franchise in the United States and the last surviving club to have played against the country’s most famous team, the New York Cosmos.
The Wings got off to a slow start. The team formed as an expansion franchise in the Major Indoor Soccer League in the fall of 1979. The club finished 16-16 and drew only 3,851 per home match.
Bill Kentling – General Manager 1980-1986
I was not involved in soccer its first year in Wichita. The fella who had it – a fella by the name of Robert Becker – he figured one year was about enough. A group of us realized that soccer could be something very special for Wichita in the same way that you look at the symphony, or the local university or the opera. The NFL was not going to leave Kansas City and come to Wichita. But soccer would give us the chance to compete against Kansas City, Dallas and St. Louis – cities that we normally wouldn’t compete against…we really looked at it as a Green Bay Packers sort of thing.
The Wings struck up a ferocious rivalry with the MISL’s most popular team, the St. Louis Steamers. Throughout the early 80’s, the Wings-Steamers derby played out in front of packed houses at St. Louis Arena and the Kansas Coliseum. The club’s had very different philosophies when it came to player personnel. The Steamers were dedicated to Americanization and packed their roster with St. Louis natives. The Wings, meanwhile, imported a stream of Danes and Englishmen such as Jorgen Kristensen, Kim Roentved, Erik Rasmussen and Terry Nicholl who became stars in the MISL.
Bill Kentling
We had some fellas who had really great reputations as outdoor soccer players all over the world but they were clearly at the end of their careers when they came here. Nobody in their primes was going to leave Manchester United to play for the Tacoma Stars or Wichita Wings or the Baltimore Blast. But some guys in their thirties would come to live in America and it was a pretty good life.
I would have had an entire team of H-1B visa guys or green card guys if I could have. We really wanted to advertise ourselves as pretty soccer. St. Louis was more American, Kansas City was more American. It gave us the opportunity to portray ourselves as the beautiful game. Whatever the quote was on foreign players, I had it and I was in a room arguing for more.
By 1983, the Wings annual attendance topped 200,000 fans, more than tripled from the club’s debut season three years earlier. It helped that the team was consistently competitive. The Wings never finished below .500 in their first eight seasons and advanced to the MISL playoff semi-finals in each of their first five. Crowds peaked in 1983-84, when the Wings averaged 9,034 fans and 94% capacity at the Kansas Coliseum. Still – the club consistently operated in the red.
Bill Kentling
We had 24 home games [in 1983-84] and we had pure sellouts – not a ticket left in the box – nineteen out of twenty-four. We weren’t above trying things that others might have thought were absurd. If you were to go to an NBA game in 1982, you wouldn’t have seen a mirror ball come down from the ceiling and the steam and all that and now, all they’ve done is take what we did.
Even selling the hell out of tickets at an affordable price for the patron and keeping our costs down, we still didn’t make any money. In my six years, we made a profit one year and by profit I mean a dollar and eighty cents. We didn’t make enough to go and feed many people.
Interest in the Wings and the MISL more generally waned at the start of the 1990’s, although Wichita still averaged over 8,000 fans per game as late as 1992. The team fortunes on the carpet soured as well. Losing seasons became the norm from 1988 on. Original head coach Roy Turner orchestrated the Wings’ best years from 1979 to 1986 before getting kicked up to a front office role. Even his return to the bench in 1991 failed to reverse the team’s decline in performance.
The MISL folded in July 1992 after 14 seasons. The Wings, along with the MISL’s Cleveland Crunch franchise, jumped to the rival, lower-budget National Professional Soccer League in 1992. Wichita fans never took to the NPSL game, with its unfamiliar rivals, lower budgets and a convoluted scoring system that awarded 1, 2 and 3-point goals depending on distance and game situation. Crowds dropped nearly 3,000 per match during the Wings’ first winter in the NPSL and the team continued to win more often than they lost.
In 1998 the Wings brought back their great scoring star of the 1980’s, forward Erik Rasmussen. It had been nine years since the now 37-year Danish striker last played in America. Rasmussen was still a prolific scorer, but he couldn’t reverse Wichita’s decline on the floor or at the box office. The Wichita Wings played three more losing seasons before closing their doors in May of 2001.
New investors tried to revive the Wings name in 2011 in a new version of the Major Indoor Soccer League. The new Wings played in smaller, cheaper Hartman Arena in Park City. The experiment didn’t work and the club folded after two years.
Wichita Wings Soccer Shop
Wings Logo T
Available Now at Old School Shirts
Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings
by Tim O’Bryhim & Michael Romalis
Order Today at Amazon
Wings Video
In Memoriam
Polish defender Helmut Dudek (Wings ’80-’81) passed on May 22, 1994 following a battle with cancer. Dudek was 36 years old.
Midfielder Glenn “Mooch” Myernick (Wings ’79-’80) died on October 9, 2006 after suffering a heart while jogging. He was 51. New York Times obituary.
Argentine forward Omar Gomez (Wings ’79-’86 & ’90-’91) passed away at age 66 on May 4th, 2021 from COVID-19 infection.
Downloads
9-30-1980 Wichita Wings Sing Hank Liotart Press Release
9-30-1980 – Wings Sign Hank Liotart Press Release
10-7-1980 Wichita Wings Sign Steve Earle Press Release
11-22-1980 Wichita Wings vs. Chicago Horizons Game Preview
3-18-1981 Wichita Wings vs. Chicago Horizons Game Notes
1987-88 Major Indoor Soccer League Rule Book & Schedule
2011 FWiL Interview with Former Wings General Manager Bill Kentling
Links
##
One Response
I have been two the Wichita sports museum and did not see any thing on the Wichita Wings Soccer team. I have a lot of memorabilia like year books and things I might give if they would be kept at our museum.