Virginia Beach Mariners

The Virginia Beach Mariners were an American soccer club, who formerly played in the USL First Division of the United Soccer Leagues, the second division in the US Soccer hierarchy behind Major League Soccer. On March 30, 2007 the team folded due to lack of ownership.

The Mariners played at the Virginia Beach Sportsplex in Virginia Beach, Virginia, from 1999 up to their demise in 2007.

The team was founded in 1994 as the Hampton Roads Hurricanes, but they changed their name to Mariners after the first year. For the 2003 season, the team changed their name from Hampton Roads Mariners to the more widely recognizable Virginia Beach Mariners. The team went on a one- year hiatus in 1997, after which they joined the A-League.

In 2006, the Mariners added a USL Premier Development League club, the Virginia Beach Submariners. Shortly after the termination of the Mariners, the Submariners were taken over by the Hampton Roads Piranhas, a women's W-League soccer club, who renamed the team the Hampton Roads Piranhas to reflect the change of ownership.

Read more about Virginia Beach Mariners:  Year-by-year, 2006 Squad, Former Players

Famous quotes containing the words virginia, beach and/or mariners:

    While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    The beach was crowded,
    people tossed like ripe corn,
    buttering themselves as they went
    and on the dunes thousands of crabs,
    moved their yellow eyes.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    Ye Mariners of England
    That guard our native seas!
    Whose flag has braved a thousand years
    The battle and the breeze!
    Thomas Campbell (1774–1844)