After reports initially appeared Saturday from Alex Ashton at Beyond the 90 as well as John Morrissey and Joe Lowery with Backheeled, South Georgia Tormenta FC, a professional USL League One side based out of Statesboro, Georgia, has officially confirmed their withdrawal from the upcoming 2026 season. The news comes less than two weeks away from a scheduled home opener against Spokane Velocity as the club prepared to begin their tenth anniversary season.
Preparations for the upcoming season had been well underway, with an announced schedule, U.S. Open Cup opponent, and new hires and signings in the front office as well as the squad and technical staff. As recently as February 19th, the team announced their finalized coaching staff for the upcoming season. According to the reports, however, complications with funding the required workers’ compensation insurance payments have kept the team from starting preseason training. Two scheduled preseason matches, one against Georgia Southern and one at Charleston Battery, were cancelled or postponed without a given explanation.
At the time of the announcement, the club had publicly announced 16 senior players signed to its first team roster, including back to back Goalkeeper of the Year Sean Lewis, league veteran and team captain Conor Doyle, and Trinidad and Tobago international Shannon Gomez, among others. Reports from earlier suggested a unique draft scenario was in the works, where players had the choice of entering a draft for other clubs within the league to pick from, but the plan ultimately fell flat. Instead, players will be given a severance deal of three month’s pay and become free agents. With such a short time frame to the start of the season, though, the process of these players finding new homes becomes enormously more difficult.
Founded in 2015, Tormenta began play in 2016 at the pre-professional level in the Premier Development League, now USL League Two. The club quickly found success on the field as well as in the stands, and became the first franchise of a newly founded third division professional league, USL League One, in 2018. The club hosted the league’s first ever match a year later at Georgia Southern soccer’s Erk Russell Park, their original home.
In 2022, the club moved into their own soccer specific venue, Tormenta Stadium. While plans for the finished product called for a 5,000 seat stadium complete with club offices, shops, and even a brewery, the club has played in a more minimal “phase one” setup with temporary facilities for locker rooms, bathrooms, and concessions. The club’s USL League 2 side, Tormenta FC 2, entered a hiatus after the 2021 season and has yet to return. More recently, reported instances of delayed paychecks became a worrisome sign.
Some of the surrounding real estate projects aimed at giving the club a financial backing, such as a Publix anchored shopping center, have been successfully built and opened, but further residential and entertainment projects within the area have been mired in the developmental stages. The stadium itself has only seen minor upgrades in the seasons since its opening, while operating expenses in the nationwide spanning league have only increased.
Meanwhile, the organization has seen its share of successes over the years. The League One side hosted and were victorious in the 2022 USL League One Final in front of a crowd of over 3,000 and a national audience on ESPN2, while the pre-professional women’s side became the inaugural USL W League champions that same year. Deep runs into the U.S. Open Cup have seen Tormenta FC knock out a slew of USL Championship opponents and face MLS teams Inter Miami and Charlotte FC in competitive play. Former players like Connor Antley, now with D.C. United, and Nick Akoto, transferred to English side Burton Albion, highlight the club’s achievements in player development. Multiple players from last year’s squad have been sold or independently moved upward in level to USL Championship clubs.
With the professional side now on hiatus for at least the year, things are still up in the air regarding the other elements of the club. A robust youth academy setup will continue to operate, while the W League side will join the professional squad in sitting out for the year, per Luke Martin at the Statesboro Herald. Front office and technical staff are said to remain in place as the club attempts to rebuild and return to play, but previous examples such as FC Tucson dropping back down to the semi-pro level in 2022 in hopes of a return haven’t yet panned out.
There are no winners in a situation like this. It’s a heartbreaking moment for the players and staff, who have moved their lives and families to Statesboro in pursuit of furthering their careers and will now have an uncertain path forward. It’s gut wrenching for the ownership, led by Darin and Netra Van Tassell, who have devoted over a decade of hard work to making the ambitious concept of professional soccer in Statesboro a reality. It’s awful for a community and devoted fanbase in one of the smallest professional markets in North America, of which the team is a source of pride and legitimacy on the national, and even global, stage. It’s a blow to the optics of the league and its clubs, who are now forced to quickly come up with alternative solutions just weeks before the season begins.
Zooming out even further, it’s a disappointing moment for the soccer ecosystem as a whole in the United States. Tormenta FC is a flagship organization for community focused growth in smaller markets, an area which the sport of soccer needs to succeed in order to truly thrive. Hard moments like this only show how difficult a task that is, and how much work is still ahead to create a robust sporting infrastructure that can extend to all parts of the country, to find and develop talent and interet anywhere communities are found.
Is there a positive side here? The challenge now for Tormenta is to accomplish what needs to be done to return to the professional ranks, to find a way to use the year long break to get back on solid ground as an organization. That’s not a simple nor easy undertaking. It’s hard to imagine a scenario that significantly improves the situation the club finds itself in.
For soccer’s sake, I hope they can.
what a bummer. great fanbase down there
I always thought their plans for the stadium, including retail, housing, etc seemed too ambitious for the market. Travel costs alone have to be killer. I wish them well. But, this is may be the end.