The Stockton Wolves were a professional indoor football team, initially based in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

and subsequently moving to be based in

Stockton, California Stockton is a city in and the county seat of San Joaquin County, California, San Joaquin County in the Central Valley (California), Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. Stockton was founded by Carlos Maria Weber in 1849 after he acquir ...

. As the San Jose Wolves, the team played its home games at the

Cow Palace The Cow Palace (originally the California State Livestock Pavilion) is an indoor arena located in Daly City, California, situated on the city's northern border with neighboring San Francisco. Because the border passes through the property, a por ...

, located in

Daly City Daly City () is the second most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States, with population of 104,901 according to the 2020 census. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and immediately south of San Francisco (sharing its ...

. The team was owned by Ryan Petersen, CEO of computer hardware manufacturing company

OCZ Technology OCZ was a brand of Toshiba that was used for some of its solid-state drives (SSDs) before they were rebranded with Toshiba. OCZ Storage Solutions was a manufacturer of SSDs based in San Jose, California, USA and was the new company formed after ...

. The Wolves were the first indoor/arena football team based in San Jose since the

San Jose SaberCats The San Jose SaberCats were a professional arena football team based in San Jose, California. The SaberCats had been members of the Arena Football League (AFL) since 1995 (the year in which the team was founded); and until 2015, they belonged to ...

, who played from 1995 until the

Arena Football League The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...

suspended operations in 2009. For their first season, the Wolves played in the

American Indoor Football Association American Indoor Football (AIF) was a professional indoor football league, one of the several regional professional indoor football leagues in North America. The AIFL began as a regional league with six franchises on the East Coast of the United ...

's Western Conference. When the new AFL announced it was reviving the SaberCats for 2011, the team relocated to Stockton. However, after the AIFA spun off its Eastern teams into a separate league and several of its Western teams failed, the resulting "AIFA West" had too few teams to field a league that year; this prompted two of the remaining three teams, Stockton and the

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, to defect from the league, ensuring its demise. Reno and Stockton played a schedule that season comprising independent teams and each other, under the name "Western Indoor Football Association." After what had been a season of finding replacement teams, the Wolves looked to find a more stable league. Bennie King, head coach, said that he was looking into two leagues for the future.http://www.sanjosewolves.com/news/wolves-face-knights-tonight-ponder-future.html King did not specify if he was looking into the American Professional Football League, a team of which the Wolves played against when they played at the

Sioux City Bandits The Sioux City Bandits are a professional indoor football team based in Sioux City, Iowa, and compete as a member of Champions Indoor Football (CIF). The team was founded in 1999 as the Sioux City Attack. In 2001, the team assumed their current ...

in the only game they played against versus a team in an actual league that year, or their old league which was trying to start up in 2012 with a new Western division, the

, or the

Indoor Football League The Indoor Football League (IFL) is a professional indoor American football league created in 2008 out of the merger between the Intense Football League and United Indoor Football. It has one of the largest number of currently active teams amon ...

, with three teams in Washington and one in Arizona. The revived AIFA, now going under the shortened name

American Indoor Football American Indoor Football (AIF) was a professional indoor football league, one of the several regional professional indoor football leagues in North America. The AIFL began as a regional league with six franchises on the East Coast of the United ...

, announced that there would indeed be a team in Stockton during the 2012 season, but that it would go under the name of the

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Television series

The 2010 television series ''Wolves on the Hunt'' was filmed during the team's training camp, and was centered around the AIFA's unique league requirement of having nine local players on the 30-man final rosters. It chronicled both the open combine system and training camp. The show was hosted by Bay Area sports personality Vern Glenn, and aired through the league's training camp and pre-season period. The show was broadcast locally in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

KRON-TV KRON-TV (channel 4) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, KRON-TV maintains studios on Front Street in the c ...

Season-by-season

, - , colspan="6" align="center" , San Jose Wolves , - , 2010 , , 9 , , 5 , , 0 , , 2nd Western , , Lost WC Championship (

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

) , - , colspan="6" align="center" , Stockton Wolves , - , 2011 , , 8 , , 2 , , 0 , , Independent , , , - !Totals , , 17 , , 8 , , 0 , colspan="2", (including playoffs)

References

External links

*
Wolves' 2010 Stats
{{Central Valley Sports American Indoor Football Association teams Defunct American football teams in California Sports in Stockton, California American football teams established in 2011 American football teams disestablished in 2011 2011 establishments in California 2011 disestablishments in California