October 6, 2022 – Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) – Florida Tropics SC News Release
LAKELAND, Fla. – The Florida Tropics, presented by Bond Clinic, will open their seventh season of Major Arena Soccer League play Dec. 10 on the road against the Baltimore Blast before returning to the RP Funding Center in Lakeland a week later for their home opener Saturday, Dec. 17 against Utica City FC.
The Tropics, who advanced to the MASL Finals series last spring, will play a 24-game regular season schedule as part of the seven-team Eastern Conference. Twenty of the 24 games will be against conference foes, while the remaining four will be against four different Western Conference teams.
The home slate includes four Friday night games, one on Saturday and six Sunday matinees which have proven to be popular with fans at the RP Funding Center in Lakeland. In addition, the team will play at home during Christmas week on Wednesday, Dec. 21.
Florida will play Utica four times (two home and two away) the Baltimore Blast three times (all within the first four games of the season, with the last two in Lakeland) and the Harrisburg Heat (two home, one away.) In addition, they will have three games each against the Kansas City Comets who the Tropics eliminated in the MASL semi-finals last year (one home and two away), Milwaukee Wave (one home two away), and the St. Louis Ambush (two home, one away.)
Western Conference teams vising Lakeland include the Tacoma Stars and Chihuahua (Mexico) Savage, with away games in Dallas and Ontario, California (Empire Strykers) accounting for the non Eastern Conference portion of Florida’s schedule. A format for the Ron Newman Cup playoffs will be announced in the coming weeks.
The Tropics have five-game and four-game road trips in the middle of the MASL season – which will start Thanksgiving Day weekend with an Interstate 70 rivalry home-and-home between Kansas City and St. Louis – and continue through the first weekend in April. Longer mid-season road trips are nothing new to Florida since the RP Funding Center is taken over for several weeks in February and March by the Florida High School Athletic Association Boy’s and Girl’s basketball state championship tournament. Because of that, Florida will play seven of its first nine games at home in December and January. Last year, the Tropics played an unprecedented nine-game home stand early in the season.
After their early March four-game road trip with stops in Milwaukee, Utica, Kansas City…
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