Stormwatch912

Tormenta's 2026 schedule was released today and Tormenta has an extremely front-loaded schedule for the upcoming campaign. Get your tickets early because there are a lot of games early in the season.  Of their 19 home games listed, only six total come in the months of August, September and October. I won't insult your intelligence by telling you how many games that means there are at home from March-July, but I'm pretty sure you can figure it out.  It was previously announced that Tormenta would open at home with Spokane on a rare afternoon kickoff on Sunday, March 8. They'll go on to host AV Alta (March 14), Sarasota (March 21) and Boise (March 28) while hosting three more games in April.  The first road match of the season isn't until April 4 when Tormenta travels to face Richmond at City Stadium. Greenville comes to Statesboro on April 8 while Chattanooga visits on the 18th and Naples pays a visit to Statesboro on April 25. The Naples game is a part of the newly ...

A year after making one of the more surprising free agent signings of the 2024 offseason by signing goalkeeper Austin Pack, Tormenta has once again made a splash in the free agent goalkeeper market, this time signing Sean Lewis from the defending League One champion One Knox. Lewis, the two-time defending USL League One Goalkeeper of the Year (winning in 2024 and 2025), spent the past three seasons with One Knox where he helped lead Knoxville to the regular season and playoff titles in 2025*. I can not wait for 2026 to get here so I can say "last year" and everyone will know what I'm talking about. If I wrote "last year" now, that now it could lead to some confusion of "did he mean 2025 or 2024?"  Lewis will be reunited with Tormenta Head Coach Mark McKeever, who coached Lewis in 2023-2024, and Jordan Bell, who served as Assistant Coach at One Knox in 2023 before joining Tormenta in 2024. "I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with Sean a...

At the beginning of this year I wrote about the ever-changing nature of sports teams and, in particular, how the names and faces change year over year as players leave and players join the team. For better or worse, it's the time of year where we replace some planks on the Ship of Theseus for Tormenta as the team announced its first departures from the 2025 squad Tuesday morning. Makal Rasheed, Aaron Walker, Gabriel Cabral and Austin Pack's time with Tormenta has come to an end. I don't know what's next for any of the players leaving, ( Edit: After writing this, we found out about one players next steps, read on to see who) but I always wish them all well in whatever comes next. I could regale you with tales of their stats and performances during their time in Statesboro. Actually, now that I think about it, I probably couldn't do that. "Regale" implies a level of skill or talent that, frankly, I don't have. I could tell you about some of their feats...

Photo courtesy of Tormenta FC We all knew the rules going in and I don't have a better way of ending a tied game, but losing in a penalty kick shootout just feels dumb. But no one asked me and so here we are at the end of the Tormenta season after they fell in penalties to Spokane Sunday night. It was a tight game with both teams having opportunities to score in regulation that weren't capitalized on. Both teams converted penalty kicks in Extra Time to send us to the shootout . It was an intense, exciting game. Now for a quick digression before we get back to Tormenta. I was reading Craig Calcaterra's excellent Cup of Coffee baseball newsletter Friday morning and he brought up something that I'd kind of known, but could never really could put it into words until he crystallized it for me.  There are no grand conclusions to be drawn from any one playoff game or postseason run. That's not to say they're not important. The games mean a lot to the fans, the players...

My youngest came out to Saturday's game In case you missed it (and if you're reading a team specific blog about a team in the USL League One, then it's highly unlikely that you did, but just in case), Tormenta clinched the sixth seed in the playoffs following their 3-0 win over Texoma and a few other results around the league, primarily Portland drawing against AV Alta. That sets up a first round playoff matchup with Spokane Sunday night in Washington, so I can finally relate to Carrie Underwood saying she's been waiting all day for Sunday night.  We're planning to have much more on the Tormenta/Velocity match up on Friday's post, but I did have a little in my game recap Sunday in the Statesboro Herald . (May require email or subscription). Before we get to that, I have had a few things kicking around in my head that I haven't been able to turn into a full length blog post, but I do want to discuss them. (I'm sorry for the soccer pun, but my keyboard is ...

Photo Credit: Tormenta FC Can I tell you a secret? Just between us ok? No one else needs to know. Ok, here goes. I was super nervous after my preview post last week before the Greenville game. I spent a lot of time talking about the playoffs and Tormenta likely returning for the first time since 2022. I wrote stuff like "any playoff game is something to savor," which, while true, could have been premature.  You see, Tormenta hadn't actually clinched a playoff spot yet. There was still a chance South Georgia crashed and burned and missed the postseason completely. I tell myself I don't believe in jinxes, but there's always a small part of me that worries that maybe, just maybe, I can jinx something and suddenly things go terribly wrong and somehow I was responsible. (I promise you that if I had the power to jinx things, I would use that power on more important things than getting a running clock in a high school football game or Tormenta making the playoffs.) As i...