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Soccer is a way of life for Ocean City Barons' owner
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OCEAN CITY - If you ask Nancy Granese, it was no surprise her husband would one day buy a soccer franchise now poised to make local sports history.
Granese is the wife of Giancarlo Granese, owner of the Ocean City Barons soccer club, with headquarters in the family's aluminum-siding business.
On Tuesday, the Barons will play a Major League Soccer team in a national tournament.
It is a classic underdog tale, and one Nancy Granese saw coming decades ago when she was dating her future husband.
"His interest in soccer is extreme - over the top. He loves it," she said.
The World Cup is a Granese family holiday, regularly filling their Ocean City home with cheering friends. The couple's only son, who plays for the Barons and graduated this year from Ocean City High School, won a scholarship this month to play soccer for Hofstra University, where he will study business.
The family has never been far from that black and white ball.
"People call me a soccer mom. But I passed soccer mom a long time ago," she said.
Her husband's soccer legacy began as a child in Montella, Italy, in the hilly province of Avellino.
Children in his village did not have the benefit of regulation soccer fields, with lush turf that is painstakingly irrigated and fertilized and mowed like most American fields. Instead, he and his friends played in the narrow city streets between the terracotta-covered homes using the shirts off their backs to mark the imaginary goalposts.
"I played day and night in Italy," he said. "That's what makes foreigners better players. We learned how to play the bounce off cobblestones."
At 15, his parents and he moved to the United States to fulfill his father's lifelong American dream. His father worked at his uncle's cheese factory in Norristown, Pa. Like many of his neighbors, they spent summer vacations in Ocean City.
Soccer in the Philadelphia suburbs was well established, and Granese had his choice of teams after graduating from high school.
"There were lots of clubs - German clubs, Ukrainian, Portuguese," he said.
He played midfield, sometimes called halfback, a position that requires equal skill on offense and defense. It is the same position his son plays for the Barons.
"You have to have vision. You have to be resilient and aggressive. If you watch the ball, you're not doing your job. I was really aggressive and really wanted to win," he said.
Granese worked in construction. When he moved to Ocean City in 1984, he eventually started his own roofing and siding business, Shore Siding.
He played in adult soccer leagues until a knee injury sidelined him.
He bought the struggling Ocean City Barons franchise in 2005. The team was launched in 1997 in Ocean City as the South Jersey Barons, a pro club in what became the United Soccer League.
"They didn't do as well as they thought they might. After years of financial trouble, I bought the franchise at a discount," Granese said.
Before the 2003 season, the team switched to the Premier Development League, an amateur league, which opened its roster to college prospects. The move also streamlined the franchise's expense sheet since the players were no longer paid.
It costs him about $100,000 per year in coaching salaries, team travel and other expenses.
"I had no idea he was buying the team," Granese's son said one day while relaxing in the team's clubhouse on the second floor of the family's siding business on Sixth Street.
Players regularly crash on the couches to watch nonstop soccer on the wall-mounted TV surrounded by league pennants and memorabilia.
They hope to add to the trophy collection this year.
The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup is an annual tournament open to amateur and professional soccer teams affiliated with the United States Soccer Federation, including America's premier Major League Soccer.
This year, 40 teams qualified for the tournament.
The Barons have gone further in the tournament than any other team in their development league. On Tuesday, the team plays the defending Open Cup champion, D.C. United.
Not only is D.C. United a Major League Soccer team, but it is also the most successful pro soccer team in America. D.C. United boasts a player so good he goes by one name, Fred, like another famous Brazilian player, Pele.
But in the spirit of true underdogs, the Barons are riding a wave of local support.
"We're really on the cusp of something amazing," Coach Neil Holloway said. "It would be like a pub team going up against Manchester United."
Holloway, a native of Reading, England, is flying his parents in from Great Britain for the occasion. He has a degree in sports management and serves double duty as team manager.
Minor league sports have taken a blow in recent years. The Atlantic City Bullies hockey team moved to California. The Atlantic City Surf baseball team folded.
"It's hard to keep a league team alive. Even Bon Jovi's arena football team (the Philadelphia Soul) with all his millions," Holloway said. "We've managed to survive through our soccer camps and the youth training league we do."
Granese said the team is starting to reach a combustion point of interest on the island - a difficult trick in a resort town so full of summertime distractions. The team has organized several buses to take fans to Maryland for the big game.
"I'm elated, of course. The only ones more excited are the players," Granese said. "We're big underdogs - huge underdogs. But it's one game. If the motivation is there and everything lines up with the stars, who knows?"
E-mail Michael Miller:
Posted in TOP THREE | CAPE MAY on Monday, June 29, 2009 8:45 pm Updated: 10:07 pm.
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