• Source: Wilkes-Barre AF1 team

The Wilkes-Barre AF1 team are a future professional arena football team based in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. They were founded in 2024 as an expansion team in Arena Football One and are owned by local businessman Matt Rowland. They will play their home games at the Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza in Wilkes-Barre Township, Pennsylvania beginning in the 2025 season.




History


The Wilkes-Barre AF1 team are only the second arena football team to play in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton region and the first since the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Pioneers of the original af2 that played from 2002 to 2009, playing in two ArenaCup title games losing to the Tulsa Talons in 2007 and the Spokane Shock in 2009.




= The Beginning

=
Fifteen years after the Pioneers played their final game in Wilkes-Barre, Arena Football One, (a reorganized offshoot of the failed second revival of the Arena Football League) granted an expansion franchise to local owner Matt Rowland, a graduate of Misericordia University, a private Catholic university in Dallas, Pennsylvania. In a press released posted by AF1, they were quoted as describing Rowland as an "extensive experience as an innovative boxing promoter and has several large boxing cards to his credit." The team will play their home games starting in the 2025 season at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza in the Wilkes-Barre Township. League president Jared Widman was quoted to say, “The (Mohegan) Sun Arena has been wonderful to work with. Bringing arena football back to Wilkes-Barre, it is something that is exciting and the league is happy about.” Rowland and Widman were college classmates at Misericordia and teammates on that school's lacrosse team.
The team will play in the AF1's East Division along with the Albany Firebirds, Nashville Kats and Orlando Predators.
On November 21, Shawn Liotta was announced as the team's inaugural head coach.




Current roster






Staff






References






External links


Arena Football One website

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Wilkes-Barre AF1 team
• Arena Football One (2025)
• 2025 Arena Football One season
• Albany Firebirds (2023)
• Florida Firecats
• Arena football
• Tri-Cities Fever
• List of Spokane Shock seasons