Indoor Memories
Here’s a blast from the past: highlights of a Continental Indoor Soccer League game in August of 1996 between the Indianapolis Twisters and the Detroit Neon.
Here’s the story of this game: I was the radio guy for the Twisters, who were in their first CISL season. On Thursday night, August 8, the Twisters played the Neon at home and won 9-8 on a last-minute goal. Right after the game, we all piled into minivans (yes, minivans, no bus, not even 18-passenger vans – the owners were very near the end of their rope by this point) and headed to Detroit. We stopped at a Steak & Shake in the Castleton area of Indianapolis on the way out, got the worst service ever, and probably didn’t get on the road to Detroit until maybe 11:30 pm. We drove through the night and arrived in Auburn Hills at our hotel at probably 5:30 am Friday. The guys slept much of the day, I can’t remember if they had a walkthrough at the arena or not. I just remember sleeping.
Then we went to the game, my broadcasting equipment developed a problem, and I ended up doing the entire broadcast holding onto an old-style telephone and calling the game down the phone line. When the game was over, I couldn’t unclench my hand to let go of the phone. To top it off, the team had a 4-3 lead late and ended up losing 5-4 as you saw above. That was just one of the many close losses that team absorbed that year in an 11-17 expansion season.
Less than a month later, the owners pulled out, and the team finished the season as wards of the league. New owners rescued them to play in 1997, but when the CISL went under just before Christmas of that year, that was it for the Twisters.
Tags: CISL, Indiana Twisters, Indianapolis, indoor soccer, soccer, soccer video