For the first time since the 2022 season, Kingston Stockade FC’s summer slate will actually be played in Kingston. With their 2025 campaign just around the corner, club chairman Dennis Crowley said the excitement is reaching a fever pitch.
“We’ve sold more season tickets than we’ve ever sold before,” Crowley said. “You can get this sense that people are just hungry to have this back at Dietz.”
For the past two seasons, Stockade FC played its home games at Tenney Stadium on the Poughkeepsie campus of Marist College, a comfortable exile on a quality pitch, but close to 30 miles from their true Kingston home. While the extensive renovation project at Dietz Stadium finished late last summer, Stockade’s season had drawn to a close by then.
“We’re all just excited to finally be back at home,” Crowley said. “We picked up a bunch of new fans from Poughkeepsie, but we also had a lot of fans from Kingston that were driving to Marist to see the games. And that’s a lot to ask right to drive 40 minutes south for games. I think it’s just going to be one of the best seasons we’ve ever had it. It’s going to be a ton of energy and excitement around the club around being back in Kingston.”
The 2025 season will see the return of familiar faces on the sidelines, led by longtime head coach Jamal Lis-Simmons and director of player personnel Dan Hoffay, who’ve spent the past few months assembling the team that’ll represent the black and orange of Stockade FC. By the time you read this player announcements may already be underway, along with a new uniform reveal Crowley was particularly excited about.
A first look at the 2025 Stockade side will arrive on Saturday, April 12 with a road friendly against players from Bard College and SUNY New Paltz. After two more friendlies — including a visit to Dietz from New Haven United FC on Saturday, May 3 — the regular season will be underway.
Kingston will open their regular slate with a pair of road matches before their official home opener at Dietz Stadium when they host Queens-based Met Oval Academy on Saturday, May 24. The two teams are part of the East Conference’s North Division of the League for Clubs, a new league founded by Stockade FC and three other clubs after they left the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL) at the end of the 2024 season.
In its inaugural season, the League for Clubs already boasts over 50 teams in four regions across the country, most of which left leagues like the NPSL to be a part of something new. In addition to Met Oval Academy, Stockade FC will face off against new East Region foes Atlantic City FC, FC Monmouth, Delaware-based First State FC, New York Braveheart SC, and a pair of Philadelphia based clubs, Lighthouse Boys Club of Kensington and Kensington SC.
“I’ve wanted to play Atlantic City for a long time,” Crowley said. “They’ve got a great club and great ownership and you know it’s going to be fun to host them. And I’m just excited about it being a new league and having new opponents. It’s just going to feel like a fresh season for us.”
That freshness could help Kingston as it looks to rebound from a 2-7-1 campaign in 2024, which itself followed a 7-1-2 campaign.
In the middle of a season against new opponents in a new league, Stockade FC will welcome a more recent foe, Albany-based New York Shockers, who remain in the NPSL this season. The Shockers will come to Dietz on Wednesday, June 25 for a friendly.
The regular season will close with a home match against Braveheart SC on Saturday, July 12, with the inaugural League for Clubs playoffs getting underway on Wednesday, July 16. The National Championship game is scheduled for Saturday, July 26. Crowley said he’s keeping his calendar open for what he hopes will be a Stockade run through the postseason.
“There’s fewer teams in this league, there’s few teams in this region, which means from a mathematical perspective the odds of going deeper in the playoffs are greater,” Crowley said. “In my calendar when I plan things out with my wife and the kids and stuff, I always plan it like ‘Okay, I bet we’ll get to the regional, but it’s really hard to see past that.’ But this year on my calendar, I put a block all the way to the National Championship.”
That’ll be a welcome vote of confidence for Stockade supporters, as Crowley’s assertions that Lis-Simmons and Hoffay are pleased with their 2025 roster.
“I know Dan holds it pretty, pretty close to his chest, but everything that I’m hearing from these guys is that we’re going to have a great squad,” Crowley said.
Both longtime and brand new fans of Stockade FC should anticipate an exciting home atmosphere at Dietz Stadium, with the addition of plenty of post-renovation bells and whistles club officials have yet to fully test-drive. Crowley sees the May 3 friendly as an opportunity to work out the kinks.
“We’re still waiting to see how much we can flex the new infrastructure at Dietz,” Crowley said. “There’s a new scoreboard there with a video screen, and there’s more room for food trucks, but we’re still working with the with the city to make sure that we can we can get everyone in there … We were involved in the stadium (renovation) process so we had a chance to put our wish list out there and a lot of those requests were granted. It’s going to be exciting to put that stuff to use.”
For more information on the 2025 Kingston Stockade FC season, including season and single-game ticket pricing, visit: stockadefc.com
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