Rennie offers some stability

CARY -- Instability is the background music to minor league soccer, and it is a winter of uncertainty for the Carolina RailHawks, who in essence led a revolution against their league.

The RailHawks are one of six teams leaving the United Soccer Leagues to form a new league, the team announced Tuesday, after Nike sold the USL to outside investors instead of a group of owners that included the RailHawks' partners.

What the new splinter league will look like, no one knows.

When it is launched, the RailHawks will open the new season on a solid foundation built by second-year coach Martin Rennie, a slightly built, soft-spoken Scot who in his first summer orchestrated a turnaround of remarkable proportions.

After seventh- and eighth-place finishes in their first two seasons of existence, the RailHawks finished second in the USL's First Division before they were upset in the first round of the playoffs. Only one player from the previous regime, Kupono Low, continued to play a significant role under Rennie.

"We have the nucleus of a really good team," Rennie said, sitting in a second-floor conference room at WakeMed Soccer Park.

"We had one of the best seasons that's ever been had in the USL. You don't want to break that up too quickly. At the same time as a coach you're always looking to add more quality. It's a totally different job to what we had to do last time."

His first year was spent culling through waves of players, looking for ones he could use, that fit his system and style of play. He fielded the same starting lineup for consecutive games just once.

Even at midseason, he was still finding impact players like Gregory Richardson, a Guyanese forward who tied for the team lead with six goals despite playing in only 12 games, or defender Greg Shields, who left the Scottish league to sign with the RailHawks.

More than that, though, Rennie's summer was spent building a solid foundation - organized and stalwart when the opposition had the ball, counterattacking and pressing forward when the RailHawks had it. It was the kind of structure the RailHawks were missing during their first two seasons, and it led to the kind of success they were missing during those seasons.

Now, with a few new players targeted for specific roles and the addition of some tactical flexibility to the RailHawks' basic system, Rennie believes he has the RailHawks in position to make the next step.

That isn't just talk. It's the same template he used to take an expansion team in the USL's Second Division, the Cleveland City Stars, to the championship in its second season of existence.

Rennie is a manager in the traditional soccer sense of the word, responsible for scouting and signing his own players. He's even taken a hand in some of the RailHawks' marketing operations, trying to find ways to expand their target audience from the existing base of families and soccer die-hards to new groups, like college students and young professionals out for a night on the town.

"I think we've got potential to do something really great here, but I do think we have to improve and adapt some of the things we're doing to tap into this market," he said.

The RailHawks may not know what league they will play in next summer, but there's nothing Rennie can do about that. All he can do is win the games the RailHawks will play, and so far, he has done exactly that.

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