The Milwaukee Wave began in April 1984 as one of four charter members that helped create a new indoor soccer league. Now, on the cusp of celebrating their 40th anniversary season, the Wave hold the title of being the longest-running franchise operating across the entire soccer pyramid in North America.
How does an indoor soccer league franchise in Milwaukee hold that honor? Perhaps it’s the success the Wave have experienced over multiple decades. The Wave have played in more leagues (6) and won more championships (7) than they have had coaches (5) over their lifetime. The Wave have been a beacon among soccer circles since their inception, adapting as the American soccer landscape around them constantly changes.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
The Wave were born at a time when American soccer was near a crisis. The North American Soccer League had exploded in popularity in the 1970s, drawing legendary figures such as Pele to help establish soccer as a spectator sport in America. But by 1984, they were on the verge of collapsing. It’d leave the country without a top-flight professional outdoor soccer league as a golden generation of American soccer players was beginning to revive a men’s national team that hadn’t qualified for a World Cup since 1950.
One such name from that golden generation was a Milwaukee native – the late Jimmy Banks. He burst through the local scene after being introduced to the sport while living in the Westlawn projects on the North Side of Milwaukee when he was six years old. Banks was a natural, born with a lightning left foot that propelled him to become the first All-American soccer player from Wisconsin. When it came time to turn pro – before he went on to become one of the first African American players to play in the World Cup for the U.S. in 1990 – Banks was drafted by his hometown Wave in the 1987 American Indoor Soccer Association Draft.
The American Indoor Soccer Association – the league the Wave helped create – was built to fill a gap for developing American soccer players, coaches and referees wanting to become professionals. Now, nearly 40 years later, the Lionel Messis of the world can still be lured to play in America, and the country’s best soccer players, both men and women, are playing all over the world at the highest levels of the sport.
Not everyone goes on playing for their country as Banks did. However, he is an example of how the Wave gave such players the ability to play out their dream of playing professional soccer at a time when it was harder than ever to do so.
PETER WILT STILL REMEMBERS the day when he was first hired as the Wave’s PR director: March 9, 1987. Since then, he’s had a hand in forming several soccer clubs across the Midwest, such as the Chicago Fire in Major League Soccer, the Chicago Red Stars in the National Women’s Soccer League, Indy Eleven in the USL Championship and more recently Forward Madison in USL League One and Chicago House AC in the Midwest Premier League. He’s worked in the world of American soccer for the last 37 years, and the door to that world opened when he started working for the Wave.
Success did not come early to the Wave before Wilt arrived, or even right after. They were still toiling away in the minor leagues of indoor soccer – the AISA acted as a feeder league to the mighty Major Indoor Soccer League. They weren’t guaranteed top players, didn’t have robust budgets, and ownership had already changed hands a couple of times during the Wave’s humble beginnings. On top of those roadblocks, they were fighting for eyeballs within the Milwaukee sports market as the Bucks and Admirals played at the Milwaukee Arena and the Wave played at the Milwaukee Auditorium, the now-Miller High Life Theater. Wilt even remembers how the Wave, before he arrived, didn’t break even based on the 1,800 fans they were averaging in attendance.
All of those hurdles didn’t stop Wilt from believing that, although the Wave were playing in the minor leagues, he and the organization were determined to put out a product that was major league-worthy. They hit promotions hard to get fans through the gates, and it all led to what Wilt described as a turning point for the franchise on March 18, 1988.
“We were playing the Jacksonville Generals, an expansion team in this Challenge Cup the league (AISA) put together after the regular season,” he says. “McDonald’s promoted the game hard – through radio ads, flyers in newspapers, bag stuffers with $1 off coupons. Their tray liners even promoted the game, so we were all over. And it even led to some people thinking the Milwaukee Wave were being thought of in the same terms as the Milwaukee Bucks! Or the Brewers!”
Wilt says it felt like the Wave had become omnipresent in the community thanks to that promotion, pre-selling 5,000 tickets for the game – a team record. “We had another 5,000 fans walk up, and when you only have 4,000 seats still available, that’s really amazing,” Wilt says.
This success led the Wave to set their sights higher, right as Milwaukee’s next biggest stage, the Bradley Center, was being built across the street. When it opened, the Wave made it their new home.
Meanwhile, the newly named National Premier Soccer League was taking on the MISL in an indoor soccer war that would change the face of the Wave throughout the decade.
After leaving the Wave, Wilt worked for the NPSL office and swayed potential investors to join the league over the MISL. He touted how the NPSL enjoyed plenty of success in various markets, and he would fax over horror stories of how the MISL was becoming an unwise investment.
Eventually, the minor NPSL had overcome the major MISL when the latter folded in 1992. That, in turn, opened the door for a slew of quality soccer players looking for new homes to play in the NPSL if their former teams went down with the league. “That’s when the Wave really got good,” Wilt says.
SUDDENLY, the Wave saw the arrival of instrumental figures that went on to change the franchise for years to come. Keith Tozer was hired as the head coach of the Wave for the 1992-93 season and eventually became the winningest head coach in North American indoor soccer history. With Tozer came perennial goalkeeper of the year Victor Nogueira. A year later, in 1993, another left-footed phenom came to the Wave in Michael King.
Nogueira convinced King to come to the Wave, even as he was recovering from an ACL injury. Now, 30 years after King’s arrival in Milwaukee, the London-born striker stands as the franchise’s leading scorer with 768 goals, and he finished out his playing career with the Wave in 2008 when he retired at 46 years old. King credits the Wave’s ascension during the decade to the competitive playing environment in the NPSL and the connection that the Wave went on to have. The nucleus of Tozer, Nogueira and King entrenched the Wave as a constant contender and a legacy brand throughout Milwaukee and the soccer community across the nation.
Perhaps there was no other way for a cold-weather city to enjoy the beautiful game other than indoors. In the ’90s, the country revived the outdoor game with the introduction of MLS in 1996 and the reintroduction of the little-known United States International Soccer League in 1995. Although the city has had professional outdoor teams play in the past – such as the Milwaukee Rampage, who played in the USISL from 1993 to 2002 – it’s been the Wave that has stood the test of time.
“The success of the Wave, I believe, helped keep outdoor pro soccer out of Milwaukee,” Wilt says. “If the Wave wasn’t around as competition for players, fans, sponsors and media, the Rampage would have had a bigger audience.”
THE OTHER FACTOR in the Wave’s corner, on top of the growing success they were enjoying on the field, was the youth camps the franchise has continued to run to this day. Being taught the game of soccer by Wave players who were household names around the Milwaukee area was a savvy way to draw in the children of parents who had played youth soccer themselves. Wilt estimates that at the height of the glory years, the Wave were bringing in over a million dollars of revenue through their summer camps alone.
The Wave thrived in Milwaukee playing indoor soccer while they were seeing other franchises around the league suddenly fighting for their turf against pro outdoor clubs. “The country was shifting back to pro outdoor soccer instead of pro indoor soccer,” Wilt notes. “In Milwaukee, indoor soccer stayed because the Wave were so good at what they were doing. So, you had this business and marketing machine and a great team on the field. What do they say about the banks? Too big to fail.”
The Wave might not stand as the same touchstone they once were, but they have survived long enough that their history ought to be told and will be throughout their 40th anniversary season. Wilt likens indoor soccer to a cockroach, in that you can never really kill it.
“They have continued to survive, to offer certain types of players to continue their career and for the sport of soccer to reach an audience it otherwise wouldn’t have reached,” he says.
King, Tozer, Nogueira and others laid down the foundation of success for the Wave to continue contending for championships today. Giuliano Oliviero has seen and felt the lofty expectations that first surrounded him as a player with the Wave before he won three championships over his 12 seasons as a top defender. Now, he feels those same expectations as the team’s head coach — filling in those big shoes that Tozer left behind when he departed the organization in 2014. Oliviero added another championship to his resume when the Wave won the 2018-19 MASL title.
No matter what has changed over the years – whether it has been players, ownership, the arenas and leagues they have played in – the mission to compete for championships is the core goal. That has lured great players from all over the world to the Wave and Milwaukee at large, and those players have consistently settled down in Milwaukee to start a family, Oliviero included, and over generations at this point – all to play and continue teaching the game that they love to the next generation.
Perhaps the secret to how the Wave have endured is just that – that Milwaukee is a good place to play, and it’s a chance for players to fulfill their dream of turning pro and lift some trophies while they are at it.
“Could it have happened anywhere else?” Oliviero says. “Perhaps. But it happened here, and that’s all that matters.”
The Milwaukee Wave holds its 2023-24 home opener Dec. 9 at Panther Arena.
