L.A. Wolves blistered through the 2017 campaign, winning the UPSL Spring Season National Championship and the USASA Region IV Amateur Cup while working once more in Open Cup qualifying and through to the tournament proper.
“That was a special group of players and coaches and staff and supporters that worked hard together for a three-year window to get the team to the Open Cup tournament where it was able to make a reasonably-deep run the last two years,” Skwara added.
A 1-0 loss to Orange County SC in a Third Round match at Ruben S. Ayala Park in Chino Hills, California, ended the run. It was Wynalda’s last deep Open Cup run as a head coach after leading Cal FC to a famous win over MLS’s Portland Timbers in 2012.
L.A. Wolves rebounded from the defeat and finished unbeaten in league play en route to winning the UPSL spring campaign. They then headed out on a road trip to Wisconsin for the USASA National Amateur Cup finals.
“We had that incredible run where we were state champs and we were regional champs, went on to nationals and lost a semifinal to Lansdowne [Yonkers FC]. That was tough,” Collins said.
Wolves lost a heart-breaker in overtime to Lansdowne Bhoys [the Yonkers, NY-based club’s name at the time] in the national semifinals at Heartland Value Fund Stadium in Glendale, Wisconsin. Bavarians SC went on to win that National Amateur Cup.
“Big disappointment,” Skwara remembered. “We went there to win it but we did not execute and that’s soccer. We had to take it on the chin and fly out of there with the third-place trophy.”
THE NEXT MOVE
Led by the Capriotti family, the majority ownership group wrangled resources and moved forward without Skwara or Wynalda.
“To this day I’ll say that we had a really strong thing going with L.A. Wolves. We could’ve made a left-hand turn, we could’ve made a right-hand turn (and) a right-hand turn was taken by the sponsors of the Wolves and management,” Skwara said. “All I can say is ‘Thank you’ and ‘Congrats’ on becoming a professional club.”
Collins said: “Bronwyn [Capriotti] and Pete and me saw that this is the start of something really special and said, ‘Let’s move it to the next level’, which was professional and we started looking at how we could get into a professional league.”
What was intended to be an ascension in the North American Soccer League (NASL) went south when the league collapsed in late 2017 and its clubs scattered.
Lacking a place to play, the club returned to UPSL as OC Invicta FC and claimed the title with almost exactly the same roster that featured for L.A. Wolves a few months earlier.
“These guys went from playing for the Wolves to that little, probably-should’ve-never-been-the-name Invictus or Invicta – I can’t remember – but somehow we were successful with that for a very, very short stint,” Collins said.
