1,000 Submissions So Far in USL Arkansas Naming Contest

Chris Martinovic, a former college soccer player at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, is pursuing his dream to bring men’s and women’s professional soccer teams to northwest Arkansas. A new stadium is in the works for Rogers. (Michael Woods)

Chris Martinovic wants to hear from you.

Martinovic is the co-founder of USL Arkansas, which is behind the proposed United Soccer League team in Rogers we wrote about in our Oct. 9 issue.

The team will play in the USL Championship league beginning in 2026 in a 5,000-seat stadium scheduled to be built in Pinnacle Hills.

Everything else is still up in the air, including the team’s name.

That’s where the public comes in; USL Arkansas is holding a naming contest on its website, uslarkansas.com, where fans can enter their name submissions through the end of October.

So far, the organization has received nearly 1,000 submissions.

“It’s the most popular question we get,” Martinovic said of the team’s name. “We’re trying to get as much fan input as we can. The community is extremely engaged in this. We have some really great options.”

Martinovic, who was the team captain at Seton Hall, played professionally for a team years ago called the New Jersey Stallions. It was a labor of love for most of the players.

“It was a different animal than we are talking about now; it was a shoe-string operation,” Martinovic said. “One year you got paid, and one year you didn’t. I had a contract, and if I scored a goal I got paid more. It may have literally been $100 a game, but we did it because we loved it.”