Draft:Oklahoma City Stampede

The Oklahoma City Stampede was an outdoor professional soccer club that played in the United Soccer League in the spring and summer of 1984. The team was essentially a re-booted version of the Oklahoma City Slickers, a team that played in the second American Soccer League in 1982 and 1983. They played their home games at Taft Stadium.

Background
The January 1984 owners' meetings of the American Soccer League, meant to plan for the upcoming season, instead became the birthplace of its replacement when the disgruntled owners of the Jacksonville Tea Men and Dallas Americans spent the weekend laying the foundations for a new second-division league. The nascent United Soccer League soon persuaded a few other owners to defect, and the ASL folded. David Fraser, who had assumed control of the Oklahoma City Slickers midway through the 1983 season after their original owner's shares were seized and sold at auction, was planning to let the team go dormant after paying heavily out of pocket to keep the lights on through the '83 season and learning more about the team's remaining debts. But the creation of the new league changed these plans, as it allowed him to operate with a fresh financial start in a league that promised to keep costs under control. Head coach Brian Harvey, assistant Chico Villar and general manager Jim Walker returned to head up Oklahoma City's USL franchise, now re-branded as the Stampede, and several former Slickers returned to don the new red and white uniforms. A total of nine teams in three regional divisions (five teams that were either direct transfers from the ASL or descended from ASL clubs plus four new organizations) started USL play in May 1984.

The 1984 Season
On the field, the Stampede enjoyed a successful regular season. Two experienced forwards from the shrinking NASL, David Kemp and Thompson Usiyan, provided an offensive boost to the young core of former Slickers (finishing 2nd and 3rd in league scoring, respectively), and goalkeeper Delroy Allen posted a 1.61 Goals Against Average and three shutouts to key the defense. The revitalized club finished atop the league's Southwest Division and tied with the Fort Lauderdale Sun for the best record in the league (15-9). The playoffs ended in disappointment, though, as the team was swept by division rival the Houston Dynamos in a two-leg semifinal.

The USL had plans to promote stability and increase community presence by operating its teams year-round with an indoor season in the winter, and owner David Fraser spoke early on about playing in the winter of 1984/85 in what was then Oklahoma City's largest indoor sports arena, the Myriad Convention Center. However, these plans never materialized for the team or the rest of the league, and the playoff loss to Houston on August 24th would be the last game the team would play in Oklahoma City as the Stampede.

Move to Tulsa
In December 1984, Fraser announced plans to move the team to Tulsa and rename it the Tornado's (the apostrophe is not a typo), hoping to fill the void left by the folding of the Roughnecks of the NASL the previous September. Coach Harvey and six Stampede players followed Fraser up the turnpike to Tulsa, but the 1985 season for the USL and the Tornado's would be plagued with financial instability from the start and would only last one month before both the team and the league shut down for good.

Notable players

 * David Kemp


 * Thompson Usiyan
 * Delroy Allen
 * Bill Sautter
 * Austin Hudson
 * Jim Millinder
 * Tom Alioto
 * Peter Knezic
 * Rudy Pena
 * Carl Bennett
 * Kevin Terry