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Ex-Rowdies Are Still Making A Difference

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By MICK ELLIOTT | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 1, 2007

TAMPA - Never again will Tampa have a professional sports franchise like it's very first.

From 1975 - a year before the Bucs joined the NFL as an expansion team - to 1984, the Tampa Bay Rowdies turned Florida's west coast into a soccer hotspot by using community involvement, creative marketing and quality play to brand itself into the local lifestyle.

More than 60,000 fans once packed old Tampa Stadium to watch the lads play New York's Cosmos. From 1979 through 1982 the team averaged some 25,000 for home games. Youth soccer programs sprang up across the area as a direct result of the team's community involvement. Players made endless public appearances, and often times joined fan clubs for postgame celebrations at local watering holes. The Rowdies, as their campy team song suggested, were 'a kick in the grass.'

Alas, the North American Soccer League would eventually die of self-inflicted wounds and take the little-franchise-that-could down with it.

Now, 23 years after playing their last game and with the Bay area populated by a wave of new residents, the Rowdies are but a fading memory.

Their community involvement, however, lives on.

Earlier this month at Emerald Greens Golf Club, the DuBose-McLeod Foundation hosted its fourth annual celebrity golf tournament. Each year, the event adopts a local charity that fights life-threatening illnesses and donates the proceeds to its cause. This year, it was Moffitt Breast Cancer Research, and other recipients have been Hope Lodge at USF, Alzheimer's Association-Florida Gulf Coast Chapter and the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation.

The tournament founders? Former Rowdies goalkeeper Winston DuBose and midfielder Wes McLeod, who both came to Tampa 30 years ago to join the team, and for the most part never left.

Both now are established in local business. DuBose is one of the founders - along with former Rowdie Peter Anderson - of Bayshore Technologies, Inc., a computer system service firm that also employees ex-teammate Steve Wegerle.

McLeod, who came to Tampa from his native Vancouver, British Columbia, now helps operate Total Doctor Solutions, which distributes computer software for handling medical records.

'We've been best friends since our days with the Rowdies,' McLeod said 'We both have had a great run in Tampa and met a lot of people. And we both wanted to do something for the community. So we decided to do a golf tournament and see how it would go.'

Almost $100,000 has been donated.

Now, who are those guys again?

'Very few people now know who the Rowdies were, or remember the players,' said DuBose, who played at the University of Central Florida and became one of the league's top American players. 'Until the mid 90s my name was sometimes still recognized, but Tampa is changing all the time, and you'd have to be a long-time resident to still remember us.'

As soccer players, at least.

Reporter Mick Elliott can be reached at (813) 281-2534 or melliott@tampatrib.com.

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