What’s your dream?
Win the lottery?
Travel the world?
A house with everything?
How about … owning a professional sports team?
For Joe Calafiore and his father, Joseph A. Calafiore, that was a dream that finally came true in 2019, when the Hartford Athletic - the United Soccer League’s newest team - kicked off their first season in Hartford, CT.
Family tradition and lifelong fandom combined to bring this dream to fruition - but the Athletic didn’t take the field without a lot of research, planning, and help.
Here’s the story of a father, and his son’s dream of bringing professional soccer to Hartford and resurrecting a historic stadium, as told to Prime.
“I never thought about doing something like this. I know my son always wanted to but I never really envisioned this happening,” Joseph A Calafiore admitted. “Bringing a professional team back to Hartford played a big role in our involvement in the project. We wanted to bring something to our city that the whole community could rally around and be proud of.”
“As I was growing up, [I] was a huge Hartford Whalers fan, as was my dad,” son Joe told Prime, remembering the professional hockey team - members of the World Hockey Association from 1972-79 and National Hockey League from 1979-97 - that once took the ice at the old Hartford Civic Center during most of his youth.
“We went to every game when I was a kid, with my dad, and my grandfather,” he shared.
When the Whalers relocated to North Carolina in 1997, becoming the Carolina Hurricanes, Joe said he and his family felt the departure “left a hole in the soul of our community.”
Hockey wasn’t the only sport that captured the hearts of this family. In the 1960s and 70s, it was soccer and once again, there was a deep family connection to the sport, and also to Dillon Stadium, erected in 1935 as part of a depression-era public works project under president Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“The 1960s and 70’s it was [Dillon Stadium’s] heyday, and you had a combination of local [soccer] teams from ethnic social clubs - the Italian-American social club had a team, the Hellenic social club had a team , the Polish had a team, the Portuguese had a team,” Joe said. “We also had semi-pro football, the Hartford Knights, and professional soccer - the Hartford Bicentennial. There were star soccer players [at Dillon] including Pele and Giorgio Chinaglia” who appeared in international games there.
The stadium, he added, also hosted “amazing concerts - the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys - some of the biggest acts in the world played Dillon Stadium.”
But for the Calafiore family, the biggest connection was to the Italian soccer team that played there.
“My dad grew up going to that … my grandfather, Giuseppe Calafiore, managed the Italian American Stars … they won the National Amateur Cup in front of 10,000 people in 1967 in Hartford,” Joe said. “We [have] a real, personal connection to that stadium.”
Joe said the lack of a local sports team to cheer on had haunted him since the Whalers left.
“I had, since 1997, wanted to be part of bringing a pro team back to Hartford and back to Connecticut, because of what impact the Whalers had on me, I wanted to bring kids and parents and grandparents that experience,” he said.
In 2015-2016, Joe explained that “we started, my dad and I, looking at what was missing in Connecticut.
“I was working at Major League Baseball at the time,” Joe said of the job he’d had in the league’s Manhattan offices since college. “We got talking; I had put together a business plan on a market study [of soccer interest in] Connecticut coming off the 2014-2015 World Cup.”
Joe was then in his mid-20s, his dad, owner of Hartford-based Alca Construction Co., was in his mid 50s.
“My son came home, one day, with a 48 page pitch deck and said he had this idea to bring a professional soccer team to Hartford, “Joseph explained to Prime. “It was quite impressive, but I was skeptical at first, as I did not know the first thing about starting and running a professional sports franchise.”
What the pair saw reflected in the numbers, however, was a growing interest in soccer in the U.S. across all divisions – youth, amateur and professional levels, Joe said.
And those numbers trickled down to an active interest in Connecticut.
“We were looking at the T.V. ratings - and looked at the men’s and women’s national teams. When they would play at Rentschler Field [in Hartford] they would fill it up with 20,000 to 30,000 fans.” he said. When they looked at the youth soccer interest in Connecticut, “per capita [it] was among the highest in the U.S. as well,” he added.
“Across the board it looked like this [was] a market that is very interested in soccer, and a city and state that was very hungry for a team to get behind.”
The plan seemed like a clear shot on goal.
Both agreed it was the opportunity of a lifetime - and every sports fan’s dream.
“Ever since Joe was a little kid it was his dream to bring the Hartford Whalers back to Hartford, and for him, this was the next best thing so I decided to see what I could do to make it happen,” Joseph said.
But building a professional sports organization from the ground up takes more than two guys with a winning idea. It would take a team.
“My dad and I went to one of our closest family friends, Scott Schooley, and had a conversation about bringing a [professional soccer] team here,” Joe explained. “Scott got really excited about it.”
Joseph said his friend had been a successful entrepreneur many times over, and was an astute businessman. “Scott knows how to build businesses and so it was just a bit of luck that I shared the idea with him and that he wanted to be part of it’ Joseph said, adding, “none of us got into this to be sports owners – we really just saw it as a great platform to give back to the community and bring people together.”
The trio set to work figuring out which league to approach, and where their team might play.
“We thought Dillon was the ultimate [location]” Joe continued, adding that the stadium was their first choice - if it fit the requirements of the league their team would be playing in.
But they still didn’t have all the tools to make that ultimate sports fan dream of team ownership a reality.
Then a friend of Schooley’s introduced the trio to Connecticut business owner and philanthropist Bruce Mandell, who ultimately became chairman and league owner of Hartford Athletic. According to information on the team page Mandell, who owns Data Mail, Inc., one of the nation’s largest direct marketing, print and production facilities, had a long history of supporting community endeavors, including the Connecticut Science Center, the Hartford Boys & Girls Club and the Mandell JCC.
“Bruce had the same idea and the same vision in parallel - we just didn’t know him yet,” Joe said. “He wanted to accomplish something very similar to what we wanted to accomplish.”
According to Joesph, “All four of us met the day after Thanksgiving in 2015 at a deli in Woodbridge, and the rest is history.”
Joseph, Schooley and Mandall formed an ownership group – called The Hartford Sports Group (HSG) – and “from there set out to select the league we thought was right” for their vision. They decided on the United Soccer league, and ultimately, focused on the old Dillon Stadium as the place to play, Joe said.
“We all brought our own skills and relationships to launch Hartford Athletic and bring Dillon Stadium back to life. It’s a great partnership,” Joseph added.
HSG took part in the Request For Proposal (RFP) process to win the right to renovate the old Dillon Stadium - and was chosen over another applicant. With a combination of city funding, a state allocation through the Neighborhood Fund, a grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and private dollars from the ownership group, Dillon Stadium underwent $1.4 million in renovations to “ bring it back as a community asset,” Joe said.
While the group was working on the Dillon Stadium RFP, they also applied to join the United Soccer League, and began the process of building an organization.
“We had to put together the front office, coaching staff, players, and once we won the RFP, a plan on how we would renovate the stadium for our inaugural season in 2019,” Joe said. Joseph oversaw the renovations of Dillion Stadium from start to finish, and the group eventually located the Athletic’s main offices in Windsor, CT.
Dillon Stadium wasn’t quite ready for play when the Hartford Athletic took the field in July 2019 – “we hit some construction delays with the stadium due to soil conditions,” Joe explained – and the team began a shortened season playing in Rentschler Field.
Typically, the Hartford Athletic’s season would run from March until October - “and a little bit into November for the playoffs, but we didn’t make the first season playoffs,” Joe explained.
The team’s second season found Hartford Athletic at Dillon Stadium, but again playing a shortened schedule. The pandemic pushed the opening games back to July again, but, according to Joe “we were actually able to host fans [in the stadium] at a limited capacity in 2020 … because we worked closely with the state and city on public health guidelines.
“We are an outdoor stadium, we had hand sanitizing areas, and masks - if people didn’t bring [their own] we had a whole slew of them,” Joe added. In addition, he said all the Athletic players were tested weekly in the 2020 and 2021 season “to make sure there were no outbreaks in the league.” Despite the limitations the team, he said the Athletic “sold out every game at limited capacity.”
“We were happy to be able to provide some entertainment [to fans] in trying times,” Joe shared.
And, “We got to the playoffs, we are happy and proud,” Joe said. “The team renewed its corporate partnership and experienced season ticket sales at 95 percent for the 2020-2021 season.
“In any given year, regardless of a pandemic, that is incredible,” Joe said of the ticket sales.
The Athletic had three months left in their third season when Prime spoke to Joe in early September, and the team was within “one point of the playoffs” at that time, having just “sold out a match at full capacity” on Aug. 28.
Beyond the team’s success, Joe said Hartford Athletic is proud to have returned Dillon Field to a facility that the community can rely on for events including “high school state championships, concerts, beer festivals, adult soccer leagues [like the one his grandfather coached in the 1960s], really, anything under the sun,” Joe commented.
“This has been a very challenging but rewarding journey,” Joseph said. “How often do you get to build something from scratch with your family?
“The support of our entire family and friends throughout the process has been the best part – and it took every single one of them including my wife, Lisa, and my younger son David, to make it a reality,” Joseph continued,” We are so grateful for everyone’s support.”
Joe’s mom, Lisa Langone Calafiore, echoed a similar praise for her son’s vision,
“I was truly excited for him, and the prospect of making a difference in Hartford. Was I for the project? Of course, I was All In,” Lisa said. “This project has been wonderful. How many times in your life are you able to do something so meaningful with your family and closest friends? I never envisioned this to be so much all-around fun. We have many friends and family who never watched soccer before they had a professional hometown team and now are the biggest fans, attending every game.”
For more information on Hartford Athletic and the remaining schedule of games at Dillon Field, visit www.hartfordathletic.com.
