Many sports fans will have been gripped by the soccer World Cup earlier this summer. Some lucky locals may have even been able to get along to games at some of the stadiums nearby. By now, attention has probably moved on to baseball and the upcoming football season, but soccer has a special place in the heart of many in the Hudson Valley.
It is not as though there are any major league teams to get behind here, but there are plenty of them in nearby cities, and that has traditionally been close enough. Teams in the big cities are featured on the best US sportsbooks, and Hudson Valley fans were happy enough to travel to watch their games. MyTopSportsbooks is a good place to find the best betting sites to back your favorites,
But just over ten years ago, a resident of the Hudson Valley decided that sports should be done a different way. Dennis Crowley, the founder of Foursquare, launched a soccer team in Kingston, New York, with the aim of using his innovative startup experience to transform US soccer. Not everything he envisaged came to fruition, but Kingston Stockade Football Club is still going, and can be considered a real Hudson Valley sports success story.
A Dream
Crowley has a long history of success in the tech and startup worlds, and, splitting his time between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley, decided that he could use the more disruptive style of working of his businesses to shake up soccer in the US, which was essentially managed and controlled by MLS.
MLS is still the top tier of soccer in the country, but since Crowley founded the Stockade in 2015, the lower leagues of the sport have expanded and been transformed beyond recognition. It is fair to say that Crowley’s vision had a lot to do with that, and he has continued to champion his team, which has now played 11 years of competition.
Where the Stockade Plays
Before we go any further, we should tell you where the Kingston Stockade plays its games, so you are ready to join the growing fan base for next season. Soccer-specific stadiums might be all the rage now, but that wasn’t the case in 2015, and lower league teams rarely have the luxury of owning their own field anyway.
Kingston Stockade kicked off its inaugural 2016 season at the Dietz Stadium (or the Robert Dietz Memorial Stadium, to give it its full title) in Kingston, and has only left for two years, in 2023 and 2024, when Dietz was being renovated. It is the home of the local high school’s football team, and that lends it a uniquely US lower-league soccer charm, as well as centering the team in the heart of the community.
Yearly Record
Just keeping a soccer team in the Hudson Valley going for over 10 years is an achievement in itself, but there have been some real accomplishments celebrated in that time too. Kicking off in the NPSL, the team only took two seasons to win the Atlantic White Conference and make the playoffs.
A combination of local athletes and some from the local colleges worked hard to keep the club successful, and Crowley used all his business acumen to keep it afloat when the 2020 season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, there have been Conference Finals and visits to the region semifinals of The League for Clubs, the league the Stockade joined ahead of the 2025 season. There have been no championships won as yet, but the club has always been competitive throughout its history.
Open Source Soccer
One of the reasons why you may have already heard of Kingston Stockade is that Dennis Crowley not only started the club from scratch and has successfully kept it going, but also heralded a new way of thinking about soccer in the US. There was no instruction manual for forming clubs when he started, so he decided to write his own.
A self-titled leader in the Open Soccer Movement, Crowley details annually every cent spent on the club and how it has been run. This shows and instructs others keen to start up their own local soccer clubs, but also brings an openness and transparency to a sport that has faced its controversies over the years.
Community First
As well as acting as an inspiration to others keen to set up soccer clubs in their locales, the Open Source Soccer-style of doing things also heavily leans on its community-first approach. Where major league sports, of all descriptions, have been accused of forgetting about the fans in favor of sponsors and big business, this approach to running a sports team is refreshing.
Although there is a nominal hierarchy at Kingston Stockade, it is not as though Dennis Crowley is content to leave others to do the hard work. Right from the start, he was at the forefront of everything, ensuring that games would be played and that fans would enjoy the experience. Soccer clubs like the Stockade and others in the Hudson Valley need the community to be behind them, and Kingston definitely is with this team.
A New Way for the Future
It has not always been easy for Crowley or anyone connected to Kingston Stockade. Not every venture has been successful, such as the legal case it helped to bring against FIFA, CONCACAF, and USSF in an attempt to force them to bring promotion and relegation to US Soccer. That case was lost, but Crowley and Kingston showed, by bringing it, that there was another way of doing things.
The Stockade are now taking a well-earned break before the new season kicks off next year. Crowley and his band of colleagues and volunteers will probably already be preparing for the 2027 campaign. They have brought a new way of running a soccer club to the US, and the Hudson Valley should be proud that a local venture has been able to force that change.
