Western New York Flash Set Stage for Championship Hat Trick in Buffalo

Not too many people noticed, even in Buffalo, when the Western New York Flash, of Women’s Professional Soccer, won the WPS Championship.

Looking back on that moment, it could have been the first event in a seismic shift that will transform the chronic frustration of Western New York sports fans into a hat trick of championships.

The little-known Women’s Professional Soccer league is, to the world of women’s soccer, what the NFL and NHL are to their sports.

The league features the world’s best women soccer players, including the Brazilian, Marta, five-time FIFA Women’s Player of the Year, Canadian superstar Christine Sinclair and the American super-rookie Alex Morgan, who all played for Western New York in the recently-completed championship season—on an expansion team, no less.

The Flash, owned by Buffalo meat mogul Joe Sahlen, won their championship the old-fashioned way.

Sahlen was determined to assemble the best team money could buy, and every dollar and every player was necessary to defeat the only team that had beaten the Flash in the regular season, the Philadelphia Independence.

The match was finally settled by penalty kicks, after finishing regulation and two overtime periods deadlocked.

So, whether most Bills and Sabres fans know it or not, the first jewel in the crown is already in place. The trend is in motion. Momentum is gaining speed.

Because of the historic expansion into championship season the region enjoyed in Women’s Professional Soccer, the Bills and Sabres enter their campaigns with an extra push.

And in terms of personnel, it is a juxtaposition of the best team no one has ever heard of (Bills), and two teams with the best talent money can buy.

The common thread is the similarity in coaching for all three teams.

The Bills would not be 3-0—they might, in fact, be 0-3—without the coaching genius of Chan Gailey. He's getting the most out of each player, and getting more from his entire squad than the sum total of its parts.

Lindy Ruff has taken under-talented Sabres teams deep into the NHL playoffs on several occasions, even though this year, for the first time, his challenge is to make the big-name players on his squad blend together, and function as a unit.

That is certainly also something Western New York Flash head coach Aran Lines was credited with doing, as he melded a roster of individual superstars into a team of role players.

The impressive personnel moves made by the Sabres, plus the chemistry that was already in place, have manifested in an undefeated preseason, giving the Sabres a realistic opportunity to win their first Stanley Cup.

Combined with what the Western New York Flash was able to achieve, and because of the progress and potential the no-name Bills have already displayed, it is not only reasonable, but probable, to assume—when considering intangibles like destiny, synchronicity and sports psychology—that Buffalo and Western New York will go three for three in major league sports this year.

John Wingspread Howell is an entrepreneur, writer, theologian and consultant from Buffalo, New York.