2018 – In December of 2017, we started our journey to become a club. Before finding a league, we needed some leadership. Pete Coate played during his college career and had been coaching at various levels in the Olean area. Justin Gilfert played at Hilbert college and was an assistant at St. Bonaventure. They quickly joined on as head coach and assistant coach and started to put together some possible personnel to fill out the roster. In January of 2018, we were accepted in Div. 2 of the BDSL. Union Whiskey was gracious enough to sign on as our first kit sponsor! Equipment was ordered, jerseys we designed and sponsors were found and in early spring we held our first tryout at St. Bonaventure. Over 40 applicants went through their paces and that evening, a final roster was set. We had representatives from Olean, Hinsdale, Allegany, Cuba, Fillmore, Great Valley, Portville, Friendship, Randolph, Bath and St. Bonaventure.
Our first home jersey and original logo design.
We played our home games at the Olean Intermediate-Middle School. We had a very successful first season, going 9-1-1 in league play and making a three-game run in the Wood Cup. In the playoffs, we hosted a quarter-final and semi-final game. For the semi-final match, approximately 100 fans showed up to see us defeat the West Seneca Panthers 3-1. That win assured us promotion to D-1 for the following season. We came up just short of our goal, losing the championship game 1-0 to Celtic 1888.
2019 – We updated the logo a bit for our second year and introduced the “Roughneck” mascot. Although our home field was still listed as the Olean Intermediate-Middle School, we ended up playing all of our home games, save one, at St. Bonaventure. An extremely wet spring forced us to move our games to a drier, turf field. Cody Ellis, from Allegany, took over as the assistant coach as Justin had moved on to become an assistant coach at a college in the south.
Updated crest
First go at a mascot!
We experienced more success on the field going 8-0-3 in league play. The first foray into the Tehel Cup didn’t go well as we fell to the West Seneca Panthers 1-0, knocking us out in the first round. Our BDSL record earned us the number one seed going into the playoffs and we ended up winning the D1- Championship game against Lykan United 1-0. This assured us our second promotion in as many years, moving us up to the Championship Division.
2020 – Due to the Pandemic, The BDSL did not play during the summer of 2020. A group of core players, along with some new faces took part in a smaller “season” at Sahlen’s Sports Park in Buffalo.
2021 – Nine new faces wore the Olean colors in 2021 and yet we had our most successful season to date. We moved our permanent home field to St. Bonaventure and debuted our new home kits shown below. Pete was still at the helm on the field and Devin Kinney stepped up to hold the assistant role. We went 9-0-1 in the regular season and took another step in the Tehel Cup, winning our first game but dropping the second in PK shootout to Lykan United. In the playoffs we made it to the championship game of the Championship Division Cup, losing 4-2 to Wolves FC. Our first place finish guaranteed us promotion for a third straight year in to the Premier Division for 2022.
