Travel soccer boys and girls programs unite

Learn more about the birth of Solon United Soccer Club after a merger of two long-standing clubs.

Michele Collins from The Solon Times recently talked to leadership from Solon Lightning and Solon Soccer Club about the organizations’ merge into Solon United. Here’s an excerpt from her piece, which can be found in full here.

Solon’s boys and girls youth travel soccer players will now face their competition with a united front. The two Solon soccer programs -Solon Soccer Club boys travel soccer program and Solon Lightning girls travel soccer program have merged, beginning with the 2024-2025 season, under the umbrella of Solon United.

Both boys and girls coaches held their travel team tryouts this past week, and now over 270 total players will join the ranks of Solon United. Individual boys and girls teams will be formed in the U6-U13 age groups.

The Solon Lightning girls soccer program, in existence since 1996, will now be called Solon United.

Solon Soccer Club -the boys program which was founded in 1986 under the name Solon Strikers, later changed their name to Solon Soccer Club. The boys will also now play under the name Solon United.

Both teams’ leadership are excited about the new opportunities offered through this merger.

Robert Cohn, co-president of Solon United who previously served on the board of Solon Soccer Club for over eight years said, “Solon has been one of the few communities locally whose boys and girls travel soccer programs have been separated, and it’s been a goal of ours for several years to unify these clubs to bring these two great programs and our families together under one roof, so to speak. Unifying our clubs brings several practical advantages, but most importantly brings so many Solon families together and gives us a point of pride in travel soccer in Solon.”

Howard Klebanow, co-president of Solon United, who previously served on the board of Solon Lightning for 28 years, added “Practical advantages offered by unifying these clubs include in our training, where we can leverage our joint trainers to better train our players – and offer girls and boys of similar skill levels to train together and challenge each other more frequently. Additional advantages of the merger include operational efficiencies, where our small but mighty board can better collaborate and use our finite resources to complete the field, uniform and many other logistical items it takes to successfully run a club of our size.”