Over the past couple of days I’ve highlighted some of the professional and semi-professional teams in the history of Louisville sports- some of which were very well known like the ABA’s Kentucky Colonels while some have since been forgotten as footnotes like the International Hockey League’s Louisville Shooting Stars.
However, there have also been several one off teams in sports that haven’t had a tremendous professional showing in the Derby City. Louisville has had a plethora of baseball, football and basketball teams but it’s the teams that are overlooked that I’d like to take a second to remember.
Starting with the Kentucky Bourbons, now there’s been two Kentucky Bourbons in the history of the city. The first one was a short lived football team in the 1930’s, I’ve already discussed this team though.
Years after that team in 1977 the name was dusted off for an area softball team. The Bourbons played in several leagues in their five years and proved themselves a dominating force in regional softball.
Currently the Louisville Kings play Australian rules football and have since 1996. There is some awareness of the Kings in the city but not as much as there could be, much of the reason for this stems from a lack of publication but the Kings have been perennial notables in the US Footy league since their inception.
Through my research in my past couple of articles I’ve found a total of thirty nine professional to semi-professional sports teams that have called the city home.
Granted, I’m probably just scratching the surface with these however one thing I’ve seen myself is that the city of Louisville’s sports landscape goes far past college sports, proving itself a fertile town for sports of all kinds.
Image courtesy of Bling Cheese
Outside Sources