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Sporting Jax plans youth soccer merger with Florida Elite. What will it mean?
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- Sporting Jax plans youth soccer merger with Florida Elite. What will it mean?
As its professional kickoff draws nearer, Sporting Club Jacksonville is expanding its Northeast Florida footprint.
The soccer franchise's Sporting Jax Foundation announced a merger with the Florida Elite Soccer Academy, formally linking the prospective professional team with a 12,000-member youth club operating in numerous North Florida counties.
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Under the agreement, Florida Elite teams will rebrand as Sporting Jax Youth beginning in 2025. The rebrand also extends to Florida Elite's teams in USL League Two and in the W-League.
The clubs said the merger should not change the coaching or administrative staff.
"I think it really benefits both clubs mutually, but for us, it really accelerates our program," Sporting Jax President Steve Livingstone said. "It would take something in the region of 10 years to get to this level. So being able to actually connect with a club like Florida Elite and lean on their expertise on the youth development side of things really sets us up extremely well."
Livingstone said Sporting Jax Youth would operate on a nonprofit basis. The rebrand, which will include new uniforms, is expected to roll out over a period of about six months.
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"It's very good for our higher-level players, because they now have a professional team that they can aim for," Florida Elite president Steven Mail said. "We've got kids that go off and they play college all across the country, and now we hope to be able to bring them back to play for Sporting Jax."
Florida Elite Soccer Academy and Sporting Club Jacksonville flags fly side by side at Veterans Park on November 25, 2024. [Clayton Freeman/Florida Times-Union]
With two children playing at the club — Ethan, 15, and Kendall, 14 — Robert Underwood was among the Florida Elite parents voicing support for the merger.
"The thing about this is when they came to this club, they started on the lowest possible competitive team, and they worked their way up to get to that level," Underwood said. "This now gives them an opportunity to work for something else."
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Sporting Jax, which includes Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and former Jacksonville Jaguars running back Fred Taylor in its ownership group, received approval in August 2022 to launch a soccer franchise in the USL Championship, at the second level of men's professional soccer in the United States.
Players, coaches and administrators line up next to Florida Elite Soccer Academy and Sporting Jax flags on November 25, 2024. [Clayton Freeman/Florida Times-Union]
Sporting Jax is also launching a franchise in the startup USL Super League , which began its inaugural season of top-division women's soccer earlier this August. The club won approval for that franchise in May 2023.
Livingstone said Sporting Jax is targeting a 2026 kickoff for both its men's and women's teams, pending stadium development plans. The team is seeking to build a 15,000-seat stadium but has yet to announce a site, and has also announced plans for developing a training site with community soccer fields in western St. Johns County.
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Sporting Jax is one of two competing Jacksonville-area soccer operations working toward professional kickoff. The Jacksonville Armada, which competed in the now-inactive North American Soccer League from 2015-17, announced in November 2023 that it will join MLS Next Pro , directly affiliated with Major League Soccer at the third level of the U.S. Soccer pyramid. The Armada plans to build a stadium, initially with a capacity of 2,500 to 3,000 but with further expansion in mind, just north of the current sports complex on Jacksonville's Eastside.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Sporting Club Jacksonville, Florida Elite Soccer Academy to merge
