Cleveland Crunch 25th anniversary championship reunion game set

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Discussion and debate about pro sports in Cleveland, great teams, title droughts and championships often leaves out the Cleveland Crunch.

The Crunch won a National Professional Soccer League title in 1994. That team wasn't a one-off fluke; it also won in 1996 and 1999.

Now, 25 years after that initial championship, and 11 years since the rebranded Crunch folded as the Force, a special reunion game has been scheduled. It's coming about through the efforts of former Crunch goaltender Otto Orf, a charitable mission, a keen sense of nostalgia and a chance to raise awareness of the sport of futsal.

The Crunch won their title 30 years after the Browns captured an NFL championship but not long before leaving for Baltimore. The Indians would tease fans in the mid to late 1990s with their World Series appearances, but came away empty. Two more decades would pass until the Cavs would will their way to a title, in 2016.

Orf is helping spearhead the reunion effort, which culminates Friday, April 26, with a game between members of the 1994 team against players from other years. So far, Orf said, 28 former players are returning - 13 from the ’94 team. They’ll gather to compete in Akron’s Goodyear Hall.

Orf, who has crossed the country and globe as a soccer player or futsal ambassador, doubles as de facto record keeper for the team as much as he is a former goaltender.

The championship

He remembers the finals against St. Louis in 1994, when the teams met in a best-of-five series. A year earlier, the Crunch had lost at Kansas City in the deciding game. That memory remained bitter.

The 1994 series opened in St. Louis.

“St. Louis had home-field advantage,” Orf said. “We took it back from them by winning the second game there.”

When game 4 rolled around Cleveland was tasting victory. But it wouldn't be easy.

"The year before I became a starter, we went all the way to the finals and lost," he said. Then, in the championship-series opener in 1994, Orf said he played poorly.

"We were losing 12-2 in the first quarter, and I got pulled out of the game," said Orf, a trim 55-year-old who kept Northeast Ohio as his home, as did many other players. "I just remembered the questions from the reporters in the locker afterward. It was a lot of questions (like) whether you could do it because you didn’t close it out (the year before).

"The decision had to be made by my coach to play me or play the other guy. He played me, and I played well."

The irony is, in the flurry of adrenaline, excitement and the moment, Orf doesn't remember games 3 and 4. He has to watch videos to recall what happened.

"We were losing by 4 points (the league had instituted a points-scoring system, like in basketball, awarding longer shots vs. closer ones). Zoran Karic made a couple of great plays. We ended up tying the game up, and it went to overtime. Now it's sudden death. Nobody scores in the whole first overtime."

Then, two minutes into the first overtime, a crazy thing happened.

A shot ricocheted off the back wall and Orf - thinking it was going to hit the back of his leg and go in - swung his leg hard to stay out of the way. He felt, but ignored, pain.

He had torn his hamstring.

There was no coming out of this game.

"For the bulk of the overtime I played with a torn hamstring," he said. "I thought I had a cramp. A trainer was stretching it out. I'm sure that wasn't good for a torn hamstring."

Teammate George Fernandez got the ball, passed it up field to Andy Schmetzer, who tapped it off the boards to himself. That's when star Hector Marinaro took over, Orf remembers.

"Hector spun off his defender and took the pass - he almost missed it he was so close to the ball. He took a swing at it and got the top of his foot on it. Then he ran like I have never seen him run before."

Players raced around the Cleveland Convocation Center, celebrating.

Except Orf.

“I just laid down in the middle of the field, I was exhausted, and I didn’t want to move. When you watch the video I’m laying there and everyone is running around.”

After the game, he said he was told the Crunch were outshot 15 to 1 in overtime. But Orf turned away all 15.

"The only shot we had was the one (that) scored," Orf said.

‘Chasing the dream’

Growing up outside of Buffalo, Orf took an indirect path to soccer.

Orf is an athlete, coming up at a time when specialized, year-round sports weren't as popular as they are now. He played some hockey and baseball but wanted to play quarterback in football. He got his "butt kicked" freshman year of high school and never played a down, but stuck it out. His parents told him "you signed up, you don’t quit."

The next year he tried out for soccer. The coach went up and down the line, assigning positions. All but one spot was taken by the time he got to Orf.

"Do you want to be a goalie?" the rhetorical question came.

"OK," came his reply.

He showed up for practice as a 15-year-old wearing football pants and gardening gloves. Now, he laughs when kids come up to him about needing athletic gloves.

"Dude," he tells them, "just go down to the hardware store and get yourself some gloves."

He was good enough at baseball to pitch for the University of Buffalo but grew to love soccer. He spent three years at Buffalo studying engineering and heard about a long-shot opportunity with the Buffalo Storm professional soccer team.

The short-lived Storm was going bankrupt, Orf said, and decided to dump payroll. That meant sending the starting goalie home to Poland and moving up the backup.

"They were looking for a local kid," Orf said. "I dropped out of college after three years studying chemical engineering to play soccer and move back to my parents' home and started chasing the dream."

He bounced around and made plans to play in Europe. A coach called and asked if he would come to Cleveland to try out. He had one of those rare life-changing decisions to make.

Europe would have to wait.

"It changed the course of my life," he said.

In the mid-1990s, Orf said, Cleveland soccer crowds were decent, with 7,000 to 10,000 showing up on “a fairly regular basis.”

"For the playoffs it was packed," he said. "Everyone wants to be at a championship game."

And, hopefully, a reunion game as well.

"It might not be as fast-paced as it was back in the day," he said, "but it's going to be competitive because none of these guys wants to lose."

Organizing the reunion

In addition to being an athlete, coach and youth-league coordinator, Orf is a collector.

In 1997, a testimonial game was planned to honor Marinaro for scoring 1,000 points. But it didn’t come off. Orf, though, had met an artist and had posters printed. He has had them in storage for 20 years.

"I never wanted to get rid of them," he said. "They were very cool. Hector autographed over 500 the other day."

Orf also bought unsold tickets from that game honoring Marinaro, Dec. 30, 1997, in Detroit. He bought all the inventory from the Force and Crunch. He has championship trophies, which will be displayed at the reunion game. Taste of Excellence in Strongsville is donating tables, chairs and linens. Former support staffers - a general manager, trainer and equipment manager - are among those coming in for the game, Orf added.

“We’re really getting some support from people in the community who had some fond memories back in the day,” he said.

Players used to run onto the field under a huge Darth Vadar inflatable. He has that, too.

"We're going to run out between his legs that night," Orf said.

Orf teamed with Jonathan Agin, executive director of the Max Cure Foundation, which fights childhood cancer; Marinaro, soccer coach at John Carroll University, and Erica Bailey, marketing and program director of Max Cure to organize the game. Ticket sales will raise money for Max Cure and the Hands On Sports Foundation, which Orf directs.

The game's alternative mission will be to raise awareness about futsal, which Orf has played, coached and advocated for years. Futsal, which started in 1930 in Uruguay, is soccer played with a smaller, low-bounce ball on a court, not a field. There are no walls, so players have to rely on ball control rather than ricochet and angles.

The sport "is the best way to develop young soccer players," he said.

"I want to introduce the community to a higher level of futsal," he said. "There's a whole generation of kids who don’t know what it is. … It's introducing the new version of soccer to the community because we're going to be bringing a semi-pro team next year."

Orf chose the nickname for that team - the Akron Vulcans, which draws on its name from the God of Fire as well as the rubber vulcanization process developed at Goodyear in Akron.

Orf, who travels the world for futsal clinics and competition, says more and more courts are being converted for the sport.

"It's going to start spreading like wildfire," he said.

He strikes a good balance, proselytizing for the future of futsal while cherishing the memories of his days with the Crunch.

"There's no better feeling than hearing someone say 'Thanks for all the years you entertained, performed for us.' But it's 'No, thank you for coming out there,' " he said.

"In the end," Orf said, "we won a championship and proved to ourselves we could close it off and finish it.

"We're commemorating the championship of a team lost to history. It's like the last hurrah," said Orf, whose ring marks the title with the inscription "1st championship in 30 years in Cleveland history."

"It's an homage, or honor, of that team," he said.

About the reunion game

The 25th anniversary championship reunion game is Friday, April 26, at Goodyear Hall, 1201 E. Market St., Akron. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Game begins at 7:30. Go online for tickets, which start at $30. Children 5 and under get in for free, but RSVP is needed. It benefits Hands On Sports Foundation and Max Cure Foundation. Sponsors are still being sought; email for details. The first 500 tickets sold will include a Hector Marinaro print and commemorative ticket stub from Dec. 30, 1997, honoring Marinaro for scoring his 1,000th goal. A pregame kids futsal exhibition is planned, as is a halftime exhibition with Brazilian players doing tricks and showcasing the sport.