Kingston Clippers was a Canadian semi-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 ...

club based in

Kingston, Ontario Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located on the north-eastern end of Lake Ontario, at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River (south end of the Rideau Canal). The city is midway between Toro ...

. The club was founded as a youth soccer club and added its semi-professional club in

League1 Ontario League1 Ontario (L1O) is a semi-professional men's association football, soccer league in Ontario, Canada. The league began play in 2014 and is sanctioned by the Canadian Soccer Association and the Ontario Soccer Association as a pro-am league ...

in 2014. The club was one of the ten original founding men's teams in

, which was established in 2014, as well as one of eight original founding women’s teams of the women's division, which was established in 2015. Both teams withdrew from the league following the 2016 season. The semi-professional team was originally known as Cataraqui Clippers in 2014.

History

Founded in 1981, the club has operated for over 30 years as a youth soccer club, originally formed under the name Kingston Township Minor Soccer Association. In 1998, they adopted the name Cataraqui Clippers when Kingston Township and

Pittsburgh Township Pittsburgh is a former incorporated and now geographic township in Ontario, Canada. Located within Frontenac County, it was surveyed in 1787–1788 and named for William Pitt the Younger, the British prime minister. It was incorporated on January ...

amalgamated to form the city of Kingston. In 2015, they again changed their name to Kingston Clippers. In 2018, the club partnered with the city's university, Queen's University whose sports teams are known as the

Queen's Golden Gaels The Queen's Gaels (also known as the Queen's Golden Gaels) is the Athletics program representing Queen's University at Kingston in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Team colours are blue, red, and gold. The main athletics facilities include Richardson Me ...

, renaming the soccer club as Kingston Junior Gaels Soccer Club. In 2014, the semi-professional club was established to play in the newly formed

as one of the founding members. While it was a semi-professional league, the club announced they would field a completely amateur side and play home games at St. Lawrence College. After finishing in last place during their inaugural season, the club named Christian Hoefler as new head coach. Hoefler was also the coach of the Queen's University soccer team. Approximately 60% of the Clippers roster would be composed of the university team's players to meet the league's age requirement rules. In addition, the local professional team,

Kingston FC Kingston FC were a Canadian soccer team based in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The team was awarded a franchise in 2011 as a member of the Canadian Soccer League, and participated in the league for three seasons, 2012 to 2014. In February 2015, Ki ...

of the

Canadian Soccer League The Canadian Soccer League (CSL; french: Ligue canadienne de soccer — LCS) is a semi-professional league for Canadian soccer clubs primarily located in the province of Ontario, and claims the history of the Canadian National Soccer League (C ...

folded after 2014, with some of the players joining the Clippers. The club also moved their home field to Queen's University's Tindall Field. The club finished their second season with a 4–6–12 record, finishing 9th out of 12 teams. They added a women's club to participate in the inaugural women's division

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...

. The club left both the men's and women's division in the league following the 2016 season.

Seasons

Men Women

Notable former players

The following players have either played at the professional or international level, either before or after playing for the League1 Ontario team:

References

{{League1 Ontario (women) Soccer clubs in Ontario League1 Ontario teams