Toledo Celtics History

The Toledo Celtics Soccer Club was founded with great vision and influential perspective by Dr. James King and Lee Aliakbar in 1987. As we began in the Toledo and Northwest Ohio soccer community, the teams were primarily focused on the older, high school-aged age groups to grow the game in these age groups. But as both Dr. King and Lee soon realized, there was so much more that they could offer to the Northwest Ohio soccer community, and decided to expand the club to incorporate a full lineup of teams from all age groups. 

In 1991, the Club made the old DeVilbiss High School stadium their home field. After the club acquired Celtics Stadium the Board of Directors decided to establish a youth program in 1994 and success came rapidly. As the club's success and impact began to grow through the fall of 1995, the club directors decided to establish the Toledo Leprechauns recreational soccer program, which is designed to allow all children ages 3 -14 an opportunity to learn, grow, and develop at the grassroots recreational level of soccer. Since its inception, the Toledo Leprechauns has proudly worked with thousands of youth players across the Northwest Ohio area and has coupled with the Toledo Celtics Soccer Club to offer all levels of soccer to the community.

With the new standards of success leading to new offerings and opportunities for players and coaches in the area, the board then decided to venture into the adult amateur and semi-professional ranks and became the first organization to offer professional development level soccer in Toledo since the long defunct Toledo Pride professional indoor soccer team. The board purchased a United Soccer Leagues franchise and brought the Toledo Slayers – a USL PDL team – into existence in 2003 and immediately offered the best pathway for the Toledo area youth to work their way into the professional soccer landscape. Ultimately, the franchise operation proved to be too much in a market that wasn’t quite ready to embrace those visions of soccer at the time, and the Toledo Slayers franchise was forced to cease operations after 5 years of successful and meaningful competition for the Toledo community.

The Toledo Celtics continued to pursue the pathway for success up to the present day. Some of the highlights of this success include being a participating member of the country's best local, regional, and national conferences and competitions, and the countless successes of so many of our teams, character, and personal accomplishments of so many of our club alumni. The club has achieved success at every level possible across the country, qualifying for the USYS and SuperClubs National Championships, 11 USYS and US Club Soccer Regional Championships qualifiers, won 10 Ohio North State Cup Championships, and countless state finalist, semi and quarterfinalist teams. The Toledo Celtics have helped to foster and develop players and teams that have achieved numerous awards and recognitions, from top 5 national rankings to individual accolades including All-American, All-Region, All-State, All-District, and All-Conference teams, and have helped hundreds of aspiring youth soccer players to reach their goals in the collegiate and professional arenas.

The club has been able to feature, compete, and succeed at the highest levels of competition across the country, with participation and championships at major events such as the Dallas Cup, USA Cup, Disney Collegiate Showcase, Jefferson Cup, Crossroads of America Showcase, and Blue Chip Showcase just to mention a few. On the international stage, the club has taken it upon itself to participate and fully compete and win at world-renowned tournaments such as the Gothia Cup in Sweden, Dana Cup and Cup1 Cup in Denmark, and Holland Cup in the Netherlands, electing to provide meaningful international games and competition for our teams, not just arranged friendlies.   

Toledo Celtics has been a part of the Toledo community for the past 35+ years and is truly the definition of a resilient Toledo entity that fully believes that “You Will do Better in Toledo”. We take great pride in Toledo and have worked tirelessly to give our time to enhance the game of soccer for the youth in the greater Toledo area. The Toledo Celtics fully believes in promoting the positive aspects of what the city of Toledo has to offer and has endless belief in the abilities that our Toledo area youth possess.