Other Professional Teams
The Seattle Thunderbirds are a Major Junior league ice hockey team that plays at the ShoWare Center. The Thunderbirds arrived in Seattle in 1977 as the Seattle Breakers before changing to their current name in 1985. They play in the Western Hockey League, one of three components of the Canadian Hockey League, traditionally a major feeder system for the NHL. In 1976, Seattle was awarded a conditional NHL franchise, however the deal did not come to fruition.
Originally arriving in 1974, the men's soccer team Seattle Sounders played in Seattle until 1983 when the North American Soccer League collapsed due to overexpansion. The Seattle Sounders were brought back in 1994 and played in the USL First Division at what was then known as Qwest Field. Six years later the men's team was joined by a women's team of the same name (now known as the Seattle Sounder Angels) which actually plays in a nearby suburb, Tukwila. In 2008 the USL incarnation of the Sounders played its last season, and in 2009 Seattle Sounders FC began playing in MLS, America's top soccer division. The Sounders play league matches at the since-renamed CenturyLink Field, but use the Starfire Sports Complex in Tukwila for matches in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup (except when they host the final). In 2013, a new professional women's team, the Seattle Reign (named after a women's basketball team in the former American Basketball League), will begin play in the newly-launched National Women's Soccer League.
World renowned kickboxer and MMA fighter Maurice Smith founded and coaches the Seattle Tiger Sharks, who compete in the International Fight League. As of September 2006, the team's score was 9-11.
Read more about this topic: Sports In Seattle
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or teams:
“I sometimes wonder whether, in the still, sleepless hours of the night, the consciences of ... professional gossips do not stalk them. I myself believe in a final reckoning, when we shall be held accountable for our misdeeds. Do they? If so, they have cause to worry over many scoops that brought them a day’s dubious laurels and perhaps destroyed someone’s peace forever.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)