USISL Pro League (1995)
USISL Select League (1996)
USISL/USL A-League (1998-2004)
USL First Division (2005-2006)
Tombstone
Born: 1995 – Re-branded from Hampton Roads Hurricanes
Folded: March 30, 2007
First Game:
Last Game:
USL Championships: None
Stadium
1995-1996: First Colonial High School Stadium
1998-2006: Virginia Beach Sportsplex
Opened: 1998
Marketing
Team Colors:
Ownership
Owners:
- 1995-2001: Mark Garcea & Page Johnson
- 2002: Scott Goodman
- 2002-2005: Mike Field
- 2005-2006: Jerry McDonnell
- 2007: Mike Sidebottom (Sort of!)
Background
The Hampton Roads Mariners / Virginia Beach Mariners were a long-troubled lower division pro soccer club. The Mariners took two leaves of absence from the United Soccer Leagues, missing the entire 1998 and 2001 seasons. In their final months, the club was done in by a ludicrous botched sale of the debt-ridden franchise.
Original owners Mark Garcea and Page Johnson also owned the Hampton Roads Admirals of the East Coast Hockey League during the late 1990’s. Garcea also held a minority stake in the Norfolk Tides triple-A baseball team. Garcea and Johnson put up $1.5 million and successfully lobbied city officials in Virginia Beach to construct an $11.5 million soccer-specific stadium, the Virginia Beach Sportsplex. The Mariners would be the primary tenants and signed a 20-year lease that called for $100,000 in rent payments per year.
The Sportsplex opened on July 6, 1998 with an exhibition match between the Mariners and D.C. United, the defending champions of Major League Soccer. The Mariners won 2-1 before a sell-out crowd of 7,133. Garcea and Johnson intimated that they could apply for an MLS franchise in the future and expand the Sportsplex to 30,000 seats.
The bloom soon wore off. Late in the 2000 season, the Garcea/Johnson ownership group reportedly stopped meeting financial obligations to the USL. The league terminated the Mariners membership in March of 2001. Garcea offered the city of Virginia Beach one million dollars to buy out the remaining 17 years on the team’s lease of the Sportsplex. There would be no professional soccer at the three-year old stadium in 2001.
2002 Re-Boot
In 2002 the USL put a new A-League franchise into the Sportsplex. The new club, under the ownership of New Yorker Scott Goodman, reclaimed the Mariners name. But Goodman’s group ran out of money almost immediately. Management attempted to eliminate player salaries, offering $50 per game, $50 per goal and $25 per assist instead. It was a brutal decline from the Major League Soccer fantasties of just four years earlier. The Mariners seemed at risk to disband in midseason. But Washington DC auto dealer Mike Field bailed out the team in May 2002 and operated it for the next three seasons.
In 2003, the team changed its identity to the Virginia Beach Mariners and used this name for its final four seasons.
Mike Sidebottom Fiasco & Demise
The Mariners final seasons were marked by bottom of table finishes and soaring debt. Jerry McDonnell, the club’s final functioning owner, seemingly sold the club to a Florida man named Mike Sidebottom in November 2006. The sale price was one dollar. Sidebottom agreed to take on and pay off the Mariners’ $550,000 debt to Wachovia Bank in lieu of cash. He claimed to represent an investment group called International Sports Partners. Sidebottom held an introductory press conference. He hired Colin Clarke, a former MLS head coach with F.C. Dallas, to manage the Mariners in 2007. It was all bullshit.
International Sports Partners did not exist. Mike Sidebottom, it turned out, was a 52-year old man with no real estate and no checking or savings account. One year earlier, he filed a bankruptcy petition (by himself – he couldn’t afford an attorney) seeking to escape an eviction notice and a $73,000 debt to the IRS. Sidebottom, in other words, was flat out broke. Neither Mariners owner Jerry McDonnell nor USL management performed a background check on him. In March 2017 the Colin Clarke and his Mariners squad assembled for pre-season training. Sidebottom immediately missed the team’s payroll. Then he denied the sale had gone through at all (despite his press conferences to the contrary). Previous owner Jerry McDonnell also (quite reasonably) denied responsibility for the team. The USL folded the ownerless Mariners just weeks before their scheduled April 2007 season opener.
The top player developed by the Mariners was goalkeeper Jon Busch. Busch made 64 appearances over three seasons for Hampton Roads from 1998 to 2000. Busch went on to play 14 season in Major League Soccer. He was named MLS Goalkeeper-of-the-Year in 2008 as a member of the Chicago Fire.
Trivia
The Mariners mascot was a jowly, bear-like creature named Seamore Soccer.
Links
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