The
Mahoning Valley Thunder was a professional
af2AF2 was the name of the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like parent AFL, the AF2 played using the same arena football rules and style of play. League seasons ran from April through July with the postseason and ArenaCup...
arena footballArena football is a sport based upon American football. It is a proprietary game played indoors on a smaller field than American football, resulting in a faster and higher-scoring game. The sport was invented in 1986, and patented in 1990, by James F. Foster, a former executive of the United States...
team from 2007-2009.
Having entered af2 as an expansion team in 2007, the Thunder played its home games at Cortland Banks Field at the Covelli Centre in downtown
Youngstown, OhioYoungstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Mahoning County, whose urban area borders Trumbull County. The municipality is situated on the Mahoning River, approximately southeast of Cleveland and northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...
.
The teams colors were a combination of Black and
Navy BlueNavy blue is a very dark shade of the color blue almost appears as black. Navy blue got its name from the dark blue worn by officers in the British Royal Navy since 1748 and subsequently adopted by other navies around the world....
, with the minor color of Gray.
Single-game tickets ranged from
$The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States. The U.S. dollar is normally abbreviated as the dollar sign, $, or as USD or US$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies and from others that use the $ symbol. It is divided into 100 cents .The U.S...
5.00 and 50.00, not including tax.
The
Mahoning Valley Thunder was a professional
af2AF2 was the name of the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like parent AFL, the AF2 played using the same arena football rules and style of play. League seasons ran from April through July with the postseason and ArenaCup...
arena footballArena football is a sport based upon American football. It is a proprietary game played indoors on a smaller field than American football, resulting in a faster and higher-scoring game. The sport was invented in 1986, and patented in 1990, by James F. Foster, a former executive of the United States...
team from 2007-2009.
Having entered af2 as an expansion team in 2007, the Thunder played its home games at Cortland Banks Field at the Covelli Centre in downtown
Youngstown, OhioYoungstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Mahoning County, whose urban area borders Trumbull County. The municipality is situated on the Mahoning River, approximately southeast of Cleveland and northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...
.
The teams colors were a combination of Black and
Navy BlueNavy blue is a very dark shade of the color blue almost appears as black. Navy blue got its name from the dark blue worn by officers in the British Royal Navy since 1748 and subsequently adopted by other navies around the world....
, with the minor color of Gray.
Single-game tickets ranged from
$The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States. The U.S. dollar is normally abbreviated as the dollar sign, $, or as USD or US$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies and from others that use the $ symbol. It is divided into 100 cents .The U.S...
5.00 and 50.00, not including tax.
The team sold out their inaugural home game, on March 31, 2007, to a crowd of over 5,900 fans, while their 2nd home game entertained almost 4,800 fans, on April 21, 2007.
The Thunder's first head coach, Mike Hold, went 11-26 in his two-plus years at the helm. Hold was fired on April 28,2009. .
After going 0-3 under interim head coach, Brennan Booth, the Thunder named the franchise's second head coach, Chris MacKeown, on May 26, 2009. . The team ended with a 2-14 record in 2009.
Attendance declined steadily over the three years, and the owners were unable to find investors to keep the team afloat . This led to an announcement on September 9, 2009 that the team will suspend operations indefinitely. It is assumed that the team will not return .
Season-by-season
|-
|2007 || 7 || 9 || 0 || 3rd AC East || --
|-
|2008 || 3 || 13 || 0 || 4th AC East || --
|-
|2009 || 2 || 14 || 0 || 4th AC East ||
|-
!Totals || 12 || 36 || 0
|colspan="2"|
External links