NORTH OLMSTEAD, Ohio — After 20 years since the team played its final minutes, The Cleveland Crunch are bringing professional indoor soccer back to northeast Ohio.

The team recently had a Sunday fun day filled with a few hours of soccer at the Soccer Sportsplex in North Olmstead. 

“You get to run around, you get to hit people, you get to score goals, celebrate, it's a family thing," said David Jordan, a defender on the revamped Cleveland Crunch. "You know, any, if you asked that to anybody about any sport, it's all about playing with your teammates and becoming a little family with your teammates and being the best team that you can possibly be."

Jordan was born in northeast Ohio and grew up watching the old Cleveland Crunch. Years later, he’s having a bit of nostalgia as he’s now the captain of the team. 

David Jordan playing soccer as a child.

“It just feels good knowing that, you know, I played at halftime for The Cleveland Crunch and watched them. And now, I'm the captain of the Cleveland Crunch,” said Jordan. “I’m living a bit of a dream right now. It's definitely fun to play for The Crunch and have that name back in Cleveland again.” 

In the 1990s, The Crunch was a big deal to Clevelanders. The team formed in 1989, played 16 seasons in three separate leagues under two different names. it won three championships, one in 1994, 1996, and 1999, but then fell apart. 

“The league just went in many different directions," said Luciano Ruscitto, vice president of operations and a minority owner of the team. "It folded for a little bit, changed names. This, this, and that. Teams exited, teams came back. It just was not a lot of organization and structure."

Rusciatto and a few other executives, including the president of the team, Eric Davis, used the added time during quarantine to help bring The Crunch back to life.

“Step by step, by step, it all fell into place and we were able to connect with the right people and formulate our plan and put it into action. And now it's, it's real,” said Ruscitto.

It was a quarantine project that turned into reality. Currently, all staff and players are volunteering their time to help get The Crunch profitable again, but about a dozen staff and 23 players, like rookie Ashton Bernard, take it seriously.

”It's amazing," said Bernard. "Nerve-wracking a little bit, you know, just making sure, you know, we live up to the hype, live up to the expectation set, you know, fans have, and former players as well, you know, knowing that The Crunch is coming back to just trying to make sure we put it back on the map like it was before."

In the teams past life, thousands of fans supported The Crunch. Twenty years later, Ruscitto hopes with the support of Cleveland and beyond, it can grow a large fan base again and keep this team alive for years to come. 

“I can tell just by the fans, that nostalgic fans that are coming out of the woodwork on social media, like with the messages and just making a sense of community through the team. And we haven't, we only played one exhibition game it’s crazy,” said Ruscitto.

The Crunch played Brew City Legends FC from Wisconsin in an exhibition game on Feb. 27 at the Sports Complex in North Olmstead and won, 12-4. With some backflips from player MaCain Spragling to celebrate, the team is well on its way to bringing the soccer hype back to Cleveland.

“We have a lot of players and a lot of good players coming out of northeast, Ohio, a bunch of them are right here," Jordan said. "So it's, it's basically just bringing back that Cleveland Crunch name, getting everybody knowing about it again, and hopefully we can build something."

“It's exciting. It really is," added Ruscitto. "The level of support has been crazy."