This Lights fan bought the use of this $15 Wal-Mart kiddies pool for $50 at tonight's game.

Even With Intense Heat And Visiting Grasshoppers, Lights Soccer Club Draws Big Crowd Of More Than 8,800 Saturday Night

By Alan Snel

LVSportsBiz.com

 

A half-hour after the Las Vegas Lights FC soccer team beat Rio Grand Valley FC, 2-1, Saturday night, it was still 99 degrees in downtown Las Vegas at 10 p.m.

 

But the searing mid-summer heat, the visiting grasshoppers and a weird-looking duck that landed on the Cashman Field pitch before the game started could not keep away the Las Vegas soccer fans who filled up ol’ Cashman with announced attendance of 8,818 — just three days after the second-year United Soccer League team played a horrid game Wednesday when the Lights lost to Tacoma, 4-1. (Attendance did not include the grasshoppers.)

 

How did Lights owner Brett Lashbrook explain the big crowd amid the triple-digit temperatures when the USL game started at 7:30 p.m.?

 

“One (home) game in seven weeks,” Lashbrook observed.

 

Indeed, the last Lights game at Cashman was July 4. And the next home game is Aug. 24.

 

So if you wanted to see the Lights play between early July and late August, tonight was the sole chance to see the franchise in action.

 

Even if it was beastly hot.

 

The Lights have won seven games, lost eight and tied five, good for 13th place out of 18 teams in the USL’s Western Conference.

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Alan Snel

Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.