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CHULA VISTA -- To gain entrance into soccer's A-League, a group of San Diego investors bought the Colorado Foxes.
The move to San Diego was easy, considering the only thing that moved was the paper rights to an A-League franchise. They changed the name to the San Diego Flash and cut loose the coaches, the front office staff, the entire roster of players.
One of those players was Stoner Tadlock, a 27-year-old midfielder from Denver who had two goals and eight assists for the Foxes last season and led the team in minutes played. And it was Tadlock who came back to haunt the Flash last night and help spoil an otherwise entertaining inaugural game for the "new" franchise.
Tadlock plays for the Seattle Sounders now, and it was his assist that gave the northern visitors an early lead en route to a 2-0 victory before 5,103 at Southwestern College's Devore Stadium.
And the guy who scored Seattle's first goal? That was Erik Storkson. He was cut by the Flash in February after a one-day tryout.
It was a cruel, if not undeserved, fate for coach Ralf Wilhelms, his players and a crowd larger than probably anybody expected. The Flash most certainly won on style points, just not on the scoreboard.
"If you wrote a script for us," Wilhelms said, "you would have had this big crowd cheering for us and you would have had us playing attractive, entertaining soccer. Change the 0-2 to 2-0 and it would have been perfect. And you know what? We had the opportunities to make it that way."
The Flash outshot Seattle 21-10 and forced Seattle goalkeeper Dusty Hudock to make eight saves, several of the spectacular variety. This, against a Seattle team that last season allowed 0.68 goals per game and recorded a league-best 18 shutouts.
"They play really pretty," Tadlock said. "They play beautiful soccer. But what matters is putting the ball in the back of the net."
Seattle (2-0) did that in the 38th minute on a throw-in from the left side. Tadlock threaded a short pass into the penalty area to the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Storkson, who turned and fired past Flash goalkeeper Joseph Cannon.
Wilhelms might have recognized him -- or maybe not. Storkson said the players at his tryout were divided into two groups: seasoned players on a lower field and everyone else on an upper field. He was on the upper field. Never got invited to the lower field.
"It was like he (Wilhelms) already had his team picked," Storkson said. "He didn't even give me a look. He didn't even acknowledge me being there . . . I feel like going up to him and saying something cocky, but I'm not."
The game turned in the 76th minute, when the Flash pieced together this skillful combination: a Michael N'Doumbe pass into the penalty area, a Mauricio Alegre backheel, a Nate Hetherington shot. Hudock got a finger, maybe two, on the ball and pushed Hetherington's blast wide.
Two minutes later, it was 2-0. On a counterattack against the forward-minded Flash, Seattle's Fabian Davis lofted a nice ball to Patrick Beech, who acrobatically volleyed it home. It was a play rooted in familiarity -- Davis and Beech are teammates on Jamaica's national team.
"The crowd and the style of soccer we played were definitely positives," Flash president Yan Skwara said. "But obviously, we want the perfect picture and we didn't have it tonight. We want the whole cake. This was half the cake."
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