The Flower City Union is an American professional

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

team based in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...

, United States, that plays in the

National Independent Soccer Association The National Independent Soccer Association (NISA) is a professional men's soccer league in the United States. The league is in the third tier of American soccer and began play in 2019. NISA initially used a fall-to-spring season format with a ...

, a third tier league of the

United States soccer league system The United States soccer league system is a series of professional and amateur soccer leagues based, in whole or in part, in the United States. Sometimes called the American soccer pyramid, teams and leagues are not linked by the system of prom ...

. Its home stadium is

Rochester Community Sports Complex Stadium Rochester Community Sports Complex Stadium, also called the "downtown soccer stadium", is a soccer-specific stadium in Rochester, New York within the Rochester Community Sports Complex. It is home to the Flower City Union of the National Indepen ...

History

In 2017, the long-time professional soccer team in Rochester, the

USL The USL Championship (USLC) is a professional men's soccer league in the United States that began its inaugural season in 2011. The USL is sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation (U.S. Soccer) as a Division II league since 2017, p ...

Rochester Rhinos Rochester New York FC, formerly known as the Rochester Rhinos, are an American professional soccer team based in Rochester, New York, United States. Founded in 1996, as the Rochester Raging Rhinos, they changed their name to Rochester Rhinos to ...

, announced that they were going on hiatus as of the 2018 season. The departure of the Rhinos left Rochester without a professional soccer team for the first time since 1995 and left the team's stadium,

, without a tenant in 2019. In 2020, an ownership group headed by David Weaver, the CEO and founder of Rochester-based Aphex BioCleanse Systems Inc. and a former

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

optical engineer, submitted an application for a NISA team in Rochester. Mark Washo, a former Chief Business Officer with the Rhinos, was appointed as Managing Director and Chief Commercial Officer and the group later announced a partnership with

St. John Fisher College St. John Fisher University is a private liberal arts college in Pittsford, New York. It is named after John Fisher, an English Catholic cardinal and saint. It was named St. John Fisher College until July 1, 2022. History St. John Fisher Univers ...

’s Sport Management Department. In December 2020, NISA approved the group's expansion application, and soon after the team was unveiled as ''Flower City Union'', a nod to Rochester's nickname as the ''Flower City''. On April 14, 2021, the team logo and colors were introduced, the primary color being

lilac ''Syringa'' is a genus of 12 currently recognized species of flowering plant, flowering woody plants in the olive family or Oleaceae called lilacs. These lilacs are native to woodland and scrub from southeastern Europe to eastern Asia, and wid ...

purple in honor of Rochester's signature flower. In 2022, the club began play. They merged with the Syracuse Pulse to form a single club that would split home matches between Rochester (as Flower City Union) and Syracuse (as Salt City Union).

Players

Current roster

Seasons

References

External links

* Association football clubs established in 2021 Men's soccer clubs in New York (state) National Independent Soccer Association teams 2021 establishments in New York (state) * {{NewYork-footyclub-stub