The original Marlboro Shamrocks were a top-flight amateur football team that played for nearly forty seasons in Central Massachusetts. The Shamrocks’ best seasons came during the 1990’s and early 2000’s when Marlboro dominated the Eastern Football League en route to 12 straight EFL titlese and seven USFA national championships between 1991 and 2002.
FC Seattle was a semi-pro (and later professional) soccer club that formed in 1983 following the financial implosion and closure of the popular Seattle Sounders of the North American Soccer League (NASL). The club was originally known simply as Football Club (“FC”) Seattle in 1984 and 1985. By 1985, the fledgling club was arguably the best American outdoor soccer team left standing following the demise of the NASL earlier that year. The Storm would soon join the Western Soccer Alliance and win the championship of that regional league in 1988. The club disbanded following the 1990 season.
The Battle Creek Knights were a low-level minor league basketball team that played in Southwestern Michigan from 2005 to 2013. The Knights won the inaugural championship of the International Basketball League with a perfect 21-0 record during their debut season in 2005. Later seasons saw the Knights bouncing between various unstable leagues and unable to return to the championship form of their first season. The team appears to have played its final games in January 2013.
Washington Britannica was an amateur and later semi-professional soccer club of the mid-1960’s. Britannica first formed as an amateur club around 1963 and competed in local leagues around the nation’s capital. In the fall of 1967, Britannica jumped up to join the American Soccer League, a motley confederation of semi-pro clubs concentrated around New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The club competed in the ASL for just one season before changing its name to the Washington Darts in 1968.
The second edition of the Quad City Angels minor league baseball team played in the Illinois-Iowa border community from 1985 to 1991. The franchise fell on hard times in the mid-1980’s, including setting a Midwest League record for most losses in a season (91) in 1987. The ball club rebounded mightily in the late 80’s and early 90’s under new owner Rick Holtzman, winning the Midwest League crown in 1990 and setting new attendance records. The team changed its name to the Quad City River Bandits in 1992.
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