Kingston Stockade FC won their first game of the 2024 season on Saturday, June 8, a 2-0 dismantling of a Valeo FC team that drove around 200 miles from the suburbs of Boston for the honor.
Game coverage is coming right up, but first a note about the atmosphere and why you should make the journey to Tenney Stadium at Marist College in Poughkeepsie over the next two Saturdays rather than waiting to see Stockade FC until after they return to the renovated Dietz Stadium in Kingston next season. They need your support, it’s true. But maybe you could use theirs too. A Kingston Stockade FC game is an uplifting, communal experience. And it is best enjoyed in person.
Soccer is colloquially known as “the beautiful game” for many reasons, though primarily for what happens on the pitch, the movement and flow, the psychic link between teammates, the lightning strike that is only stopped by the back of the net. But also beautiful is what happens in the stands, between fans. It is tribal but open. Soccer is for everyone.
After the game, I made my way toward the benches from the rows of fixed stone levels where the Dutch Guard Supporter’s Group pounds tribal drums, waves flags, sings Stockade songs, fires off air horns, embraces one another and releases colorful smoke after goals scored by the home side. They were extremely busy on Saturday, as Kingston scored two goals that counted and another two called back, one for offsides and another for a reason which did not survive the journey from the loudspeaker to the opposite side of the pitch.
I initially intended to speak to team officials after the win, but as I stood behind the row of kids getting soccer balls, souvenirs, and Stockade FC shirts signed by players, it no longer made sense to report as usual. Telling you that the smile on club chairman Dennis Crowley’s face was as wide as it’s ever been after a game says more than anything I could have asked in that moment.
The same was true of my planned chat with Jamal Lis-Simmons, the club’s first-ever captain in his playing days, and the coach since the 2019 campaign. Lis-Simmons was on the pitch after the final whistle, kicking a soccer ball around with his daughters, a smile as wide as Crowley’s. Any question about what the win meant, or how Lis-Simmons saw the team carrying the momentum into next week, or through the rest of the schedule would have felt inadequate. I put my standard postgame patter into my back pocket and soaked up the atmosphere instead. I was at the game with my family, too. I understood.
I did conduct one brief interview while waiting in line at a food truck during halftime, and it suits the narrative thrust of this story just fine. Art Lenton and his wife Gabriele Hammond live in Palo Alto, California. Lenton was in grad school when he first heard about Stockade FC through an episode of the Men in Blazers podcast and wound up a fan from afar. A visit to Hudson this week for a wedding gave Lenton, Hammond, and their two kids, their first chance to catch Stockade FC in person.
“It was so worth the wait,” said Art, wearing a Stockade FC hat a local friend bought him in 2018. He’s worn the same hat to soccer games in the Bay Area — from his kids’ up to the pros — and beyond ever since. “This is exactly the kind of vibe I expected to find at a Stockade game.”
Lenton laughed when I suggested his family might have been a good luck charm for a team that’s struggled so far in 2024.
“Don’t let my daughters hear that or they’ll have us out looking at houses tomorrow,” he said. “But we will be back. We’re Stockade fans for life now.”
This is not scientific analysis, but it is science fiction-adjacent, to note that Stockade FC’s season records have mirrored the longstanding belief that the best Star Trek films are the evens, and the less successful the odds. The inaugural 2016 campaign was Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a 5-8-3 overall finish. In 2017, Stockade went 7-4-1 – The Wrath of Khan — finishing first in the conference, making it to the regional semifinals, and qualifying for the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. In their third season – The Search for Spock — Stockade went 3-5-2. In their fourth — The Voyage Home — 7-3-4. Kingston’s fifth season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the less said about the fifth Star Trek movie — The Final Frontier — the better.
The Star Trek analogy gets a little muddy after that, though it’s worth reporting that Stockade FC went 5-1-4 in 2021, 2-5-3 in 2022 and 7-1-2 last year. And coming into Saturday’s game against Valeo FC, Kingston had one draw, four losses and zero wins. If it’s possible for a game to be considered “must-win” right in the middle of the season, this was it. And Stockade FC rose to the challenge.
Where will the 2024 season fall in the pantheon? Were the pair of blistering goals by Marist product Richard Morel a harbinger of things to come in the second half of the season? Will the electrifying clean sheet by keeper Lorenzo Nunez signal to the rest of the NPSL’s North Atlantic Conference that Kingston’s goal is closed for business? You’ll have to show up to see.
Four games remain on Kingston Stockade FC’s regular season schedule, the next two at Tenney Stadium in Poughkeepsie. On Saturday, June 15, New Jersey United AC comes for a visit, followed one week later by longtime rival Hartford City FC. Both games are winnable, particularly if Kingston plays like they did against Valeo FC. You should be there to see it happen. You should be there to be a part of it.
Join the family! 
