The Carolina RailHawks will be without its 2009 Defensive Player of the Year in 2010. Defender Jeremy Tolleson retired from professional soccer today at the age of 27.

In a team press release, Tolleson said he was retiring to pursue mission work in Honduras.

All three of his professional seasons in soccer were with RailHawks coach Martin Rennie. Both men came over to Carolina after two years with Cleveland prior to the 2009 season.

“I hardly ever saw him play a bad game,” Rennie said. “He is consistently a very good player you can always rely on. We’ll definitely miss having him, but we wish him all the best and we’re excited about what he’s going on to do.”

In his only season with the RailHawks, Tolleson missed the first six games of the year but played all but 38 minutes the rest of the year.

The Carolina defense allowed a 0.63 goals against average and posted 17 shutouts last year.

Q: Where do the RailHawks stand with what's happened in the past week and how does the organization feel about what transpired?

A: Well, I've been involved in this for two and a half years up to my eyebrows. There's a little bit of nostalgia and happiness in that it's finally over. The RailHawks are full steam ahead for this year even though it's a transition year. I think the thing that did not come out in the conference call is that there are three NASL teams that are playing in the USL Conference -- that's all they're doing. That's all they are doing is playing in a conference in order to have two conferences for 12 teams. They are NASL teams so we have nine NASL teams that are committed to us for 2011. I'm excited because we'll get all these problems with USL and we all get to play this year and I'm even more excited we will now be able to dedicate all of our resources towards launching NASL completely with the beginning of 2011.  The Carolina RailHawks are an integral part of that and we're pretty excited about that.

Q: In hindsight, is it better to have almost a full season to launch a league than trying to launch it almost immediately after one season ends?

A: That's a very good question. We were going so fast and rapid for the past two or three months to launch our league, once you got into the details of it you could see all of the ramifications the deeper we got into it. So now that it's come to the point where we have this transition year we actually think it's kind of a blessing that we now have a full year to lay out the whole league and launch it properly.

Q: What did you think of [USSF President Sunil] Gulati's assessment that there wasn't enough long-term stability in the proposed NASL?

A: That was a point of debate throughout all of the negotiations because the standards for division II aren't very tight, they're very loose -- he later stated he was going to tighten those up -- it's kind of the in the eye of the beholder. With the nine teams on the NASL side, they're all strong financial owners and we see no risk of them not being a part of our league for the long-term.

Q: What's it going to be with the division setup? How will it affect championship play?

A: We're going to work towards a balanced schedule as best we can but one reason I'm down here in Fort Lauderdale is that we've got this settled we've got to produce a schedule. So we'll probably have that done in another week or so but we'll try to work as much of a balanced schedule as we can. But quite frankly from a championship standpoint, it'll be easier to use a single table. And it will be put together single table to determine who makes the playoffs, just like it does now.

Q: Then why have the divisions? Is it to just have the names out there?

A: Yeah, it gives both of us trying to brand ourselves and launch it because pretty soon we'll be competitors off the field. On the field we'll compete. Off the field, NASL will start looking towards expansion and so will USL. We have nine [teams], they have three -- that's the starting point. And as soon as things get settled with tightening up these division II standards which is a very high priority of the federation now, I think that'll be done relatively quickly. The NASL, we will file for sanctioning immediately. The day after in which standards are tightened up and announced, the application will be re-filed and I have every confidence that we'll be sanctioned for 2011.

The United States Soccer Federation will be holding a press conference at 3 p.m. today to announce its plans for Division II soccer in 2010.

The USSF had given the United Soccer League (which the Carolina RailHawks left along with eight other teams) and proposed North American Soccer League (which the RailHawks led a movement to form) a seven-day deadline to form a single league to be approved on a provisional basis after both leagues were denied sanctioning.

Insidemnsoccer.com reported this morning that Montreal Impact owner Joey Saputo told a Canadian radio show Wednesday night that the USL and NASL had come to an agreement and will play this year.

The press conference should lay out the details of the new league. RailHawk officials cannot comment at this time thanks to a USSF-mandated gag order (which Saputo appears to have broken).

We will have more details as this story unfolds today on the SWakeSports blog and carynews.com/sports.

Aug. 27 - Nike sells the USL to NuRock soccer holdings instead of the team of owners. The owners are believed to be considering a new soccer league.

Oct. 3 - The USL releases players from Carolina, Minnesota and Miami, stating that they own the contracts to each team and the team's decision to leave the league makes them null and void. Left out of this was Montreal and Vancouver, which were playing in the USL final and are successful enough to plan for jumps to the MLS. However, the players remained with their teams as the owners maintained the USL did not, in fact, own the contracts.

Nov. 3 - Minnesota, mired in debt, releases its players for real this time. It had previously lost its general manager and coach.

Nov. 10 - Carolina, Minnesota, Miami, Vancouver, Montreal, Atlanta and St. Louis submit an application for a new league to the United States Soccer Federation. This is one team shy of the 8-team minimum the USSF normally requires as Tampa was dropped from the initially rumored list.

Nov. 20 - Tampa and Baltimore are added to the list, which is significant because it gives the new league nine teams — one more than eight should Minnesota fold (more on that on Sunday). However, the USL struck back later that day with a release vowing to pursue all (legal?) actions to keep Tampa and Baltimore in the USL. The USL says it believes the TOA is meddling with current USL teams under contract for the 2010 season.

Q: Just to be clear, you never paid the [USL franchise fee] for this upcoming year right?

A: No, I got out several months ago. 

Q: Was there a team that did pay the fee but is leaving the USL?

A: Not in our group. There's a few others in the league now that still haven't paid the fee. They're kind of sitting on the fence waiting to see what will happen. 

Q: Is there any talk about switching to the FIFA calendar?

A: There’s nothing serious in the time. Now, FIFA likes that, for everyone to be on the same calendar but you’ve got all these objections. We’ve got teams up in Rochester, Minnesota, Montreal and Vancouver. So there’s some objection to it. Now the answer to it is really not all that difficult. The way they do it over in Europe – they have cold weather over there too – so what they do is basically take two seasons. They usually start about August and end around April. But what they’ll do is split it. They’ll play from August till like December. Then they’ll take a big ol’ break during the cold months and maybe do some friendly matches and things like that in between. And then they’ll start the second half of the season late February/March. That’s how we’d do it in the United States to get around the weather problem. To me, that’s probably several years down the road.

(Sorry this is a day late, we've had some issue with the blogs, and apparently it didn't post yesterday)

Not much was decided in last weekend's meeting with ownership groups in the Team Owners' Association, a group that includes the Carolina RailHawks and represents franchises willing to separate from the United Soccer League and form their own league.

It was more of a social gathering than anything else, but that changes today. The USL leadership and TOA will meet again, hoping to change the stagnant state of current negotiations. 

RailHawks president Brian Wellman said meetings called by United States Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati may have "stabilized" a lot of the tension between the new ownership of the United Soccer League (USL) and Team Owners Association (TOA).

Wellman said his father and majority owner Selby Wellman was representing the RailHawks at the meetings in New York City that were scheduled for Tuesday and have continued into today.

It was the first time the USL leaders, Alec Papadakis and Rob Hoskins — the ownership team of NuRock Soccer Holdings that purchased the USL in late August — and USL president Tim Holt had met with all representatives of the TOA under the same roof.

"It seemed like at least a lot of the tension has stabalized because everyone finally got to meet face-to-face and everyone knows what everyone's goals are," Brian Wellman said.

Outside of that, Wellman said most everything else is up in the air.

"Outside of that, there's nothing definitive."

The dispute between the league and the TOA hit a boiling point on Friday when the USL e-mailed players from the RailHawks and other TOA member franchises saying that not only were those respective franchises no longer in the USL, its players had been released from their contracts.

"I think a lot of positives just came out of a face-to-face meeting as opposed to e-mails, phone calls and things that... communication can get out of context when it's done over the internet and not the old-fashioned way." 

If you think it's odd that this is the first time those face-to-face meetings have taken place, Wellman said the TOA requested a face-to-face meeting immediately after NuRock's purchase of the USL. The USL leader group insisted they meet with each individual team instead.

"We definitely wanted to meet with them first and foremost, but they wanted to do it a separate way," Wellman said. "So yesterday was the first time they all got together."

So where does this leave the RailHawks? Are they any closer to forming a separate league with other TOA members or is a return to the USL more promising? Wellman, who has said the RailHawks will play next year in some capacity, said those answers are too far off to determine presently.

"I couldn't give that now. I wouldn't know where to begin with that. There's still a lot of work to be done, but at the same time there's still a time factor so a lot of work is going to have to get done in a short amount of time."

In an interview on Monday, Wellman noted that a decision needs to be reached within the "next 30 days." The fall is when teams must re-sign players (the RailHawks have "6-8" players they are hoping to re-sign according to Wellman) and create next year's schedule, among other things.

With USSF officials due in London within the next 24 hours, Wellman said it may be towards the end of the week before anything resolute is determined. For now, at least cooler heads have prevailed.

"I don't know what the next step is. Again, I haven't gotten enough information from the guys. I'm sure after today and into tomorrow we'll get an idea what the next step is for sure." 

Carolina RailHawks owner Brian Wellman said in an interview yesterday that there was "no chance [the RailHawks] don't play" next season. This after the most recent developments in an ongoing dispute between the United Soccer League and the team.

In what league, however remains unknown. Wellman contends that the team is open to returning to the USL, but USL president Tim Holt said the RailHawks had "notified us several times of their decision to remove themselves from the USL.

The United States Soccer Federation called a meeting for today in New York City that will involve the USL and team owners. Wellman said he will be there.

To read the latest on the situation, click here for the story.

A press release by the United Soccer Leagues yesterday confirmed the league has been sold to NuRock Soccer Holdings, an Atlanta-based group.

Read more about the move here. 

The Carolina RailHawks, through an offseason coaching change and a lot of player shuffling, have put together a club that's amounted more league wins (10) than any other in franchise history -- and we've still got a month and a half to go.

How far can the team, which currently sits in fourth-place, go in their third year of existence? That may be determined by the latest addition, newcomer Gregory Richardson.