AC Boise drops its first home game. Coach calls it ‘our poorest defensive showing’
In a season full of firsts, Athletic Club Boise recorded a first Saturday it hoped to avoid for a while longer.
AC Boise dropped its first home game in club history at Expo Idaho, falling 3-1 to Fort Wayne FC to snap a six-game unbeaten streak on all fields, including a run of four straight home games without a loss.
Fort Wayne (4-2-3) fired a slew of long through balls through the Boise (4-3-2) defense all night. And the Indiana club converted a pair of the low-percentage opportunities to provide the decisive margin.
“I think that was our poorest defensive showing of the season so far,” Boise coach Nate Miller said. “... Something we take a lot of pride in is having elite communication, being really dependable in certain moments. And I think that’s the first time I’ve seen that from my team.”
The game got off to a troubling start for Boise, which lost midfielder Charlie Adams to a calf injury in the 7th minute. He quickly handed the captain’s armband to Blake Bodily after hitting the turf, and Fort Wayne pounced 2 minutes later as Boise tried to regroup.
A long ball sprung Fort Wayne midfielder Kabiru Gafar for a run down the right sideline. He fired a cross into the box, and Lilian Ricol one-time a shot with his left foot into the back of the net for the early lead.
Fort Wayne then doubled its lead in the 59th minute on an ugly sequence in the Boise box.
Jake Crull blocked the initial shot from Taig Healy, but the rebound fell between Boise’s Jonathan Ricketts and Moussa Ndiaye. Both had open looks to clear the dangerous ball. Instead, both hesitated, their feet tangled and a charging Healy banged in the loose ball.
“It’s a quick reaction, just try to get something on it,” Ricketts said. “Then the ball was just sitting right in between us, and time runs so fast in those moments.
“There’s just a lack of communication, and we couldn’t get the ball clear. … We were just right up against the ball. It was just a difficult situation that should be solved.”
Dominic Gasso breathed life into the Idaho side in the 69th minute, teeing off and launching a 30-yard stinger missile into the net to put Boise on the board. But Fort Wayne’s Emerson Nieto released Ricol up the center of the field in the 83rd minute, and the French native beat a backpedaling Jonathan Kliewer for his second goal of the night to secure the road victory.
Boise dominated the game on the stat sheet, out shooting Fort Wayne 30-7 and controlling the ball for 63% of the match. But Boise only put six shots on target, wasting a raft of opportunities.
“We need to do better with the chances we get,” Bodily said. “I need to provide better service for our forwards so they can have better looks. I think it’s just a culmination of everything that we kind of didn’t play our best game today.”
Miller said Fort Wayne came in with a plan to slow the game down, disrupting the flow of play with a physical style and a host of fouls. But he added Boise needs to punish that strategy on set pieces.
“Our set piece service has to be better,” Miller said. “I think that was something that we were extremely poor (at) today. I’m really unhappy with our set piece service in the first half.
“If they’re going to stop the game and foul, then we need to punish them for it. We built this team to play really attacking, good football. But then we also have the tool in our bag to be a great set piece team.”
The loss drops Boise from fourth to seventh place in the USL League One standings after nine matches. Boise gets a chance to rebound Wednesday when it hosts the Sarasota Paradise (2-7-1) in its fourth straight match at Expo Idaho.
BOISE WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM LOSES REGIONAL RIVAL
The Spokane Zephyr folded Monday, leaving Boise’s yet-to-be-named women’s soccer team as the only planned club west of Texas when it’s scheduled to join the USL Super League in the fall of 2027.
The Spokane women’s side averaged just 993 fans this past season, The Spokesman-Review reported. The club also missed several payment deadlines to the public facilities district that runs ONE Spokane Stadium.
The Dallas Trinity will now become Boise’s closest opponent in the women’s USL Super League. The rest of the league’s seven current clubs are all in the Eastern Time Zone.
Ryan and Katie Harnetiaux also own Spokane’s men’s soccer team, the Velocity. The future of that club remains unknown. The Spokane Velocity play in USL League One alongside AC Boise and served as the Idaho club’s first home opponent.
Instability remains a regular feature of the United Soccer League. Thirty men’s clubs have played in USL League One since its debut in 2019. Eleven of those 30 clubs folded, stepped down a level or made a lateral move in the U.S. soccer pyramid — including South Georgia Tormenta, which abandoned its 2026 schedule two weeks before it started.
Spokane is the first women’s club to fold in the two-year history of the Super League. The Zephyr’s collapse also affects Rocky Mountain High grad Kelsey Oyler (2021), who played in 27 of 28 games as a rookie this past season, including 22 starts.
AC BOISE OWNER MOVES UP LIST
Boise native Sofia Huerta made her 200th NWSL regular-season start on Friday, making her just the fifth player in National Women’s Soccer League history to reach that milestone.
The AC Boise part owner also served as the Seattle Reign’s captain and converted a penalty kick in a 2-1 win over Boston Legacy.
This story was originally published May 23, 2026 at 10:31 PM.
