Fayetteville Marksmen

From FireAntz to Marksmen

Professional hockey in Fayetteville, North Carolina predates the current club. The Crown Coliseum opened in 1997 and housed the Fayetteville Force until 2001. The franchise that survives today began the following year as the Cape Fear FireAntz in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League, playing its first season in 2002-03. When that league folded the team spent 2003-04 in the South East Hockey League, then joined what became the Southern Professional Hockey League in 2004 as the Fayetteville FireAntz.

The rebrand to Marksmen came in 2017, the name drawn from the city's long association with the neighbouring US Army post at Fort Bragg and from the native Carolina red fox that gives the club its mascot and colour scheme of black, orange, olive and cream. The team also signed a five-year lease with a five-year option at the Crown Complex that August, tying it to the Coliseum for the medium term.

The club is owned by Charles "Chuck" Norris, with Alex Wall as team president. It sat out the 2020-21 campaign entirely because of arena capacity restrictions during the pandemic, one of several SPHL clubs that could not make the maths work on a reduced house.

The seasons that count

The silverware is thin but real. Fayetteville won the SPHL's President's Cup in 2006-07, beating the Jacksonville Barracudas in a best-of-five final, and took the William B. Coffey Trophy as regular-season champions in 2012-13 under Mark DeSantis. Jesse Kallechy was named coach of the year in 2019-20 before leaving for the ECHL's Florida Everblades.

The two most recent completed seasons tell the story of where the club actually sits. In 2024-25 the Marksmen went 30-19-5-2 for 67 points and fifth place, scoring 164 goals and conceding 182, then lost the quarter-final series to the fourth-seeded Birmingham Bulls without winning a game. Evansville went on to take the Cup.

In 2025-26 the floor gave way. Fayetteville finished 23-28-5-2 for 53 points, tenth in the league and out of the play-off picture, with 141 goals for and 169 against — a drop of 23 goals scored on a slightly longer schedule. Peoria won the Coffey Trophy with 79 points; Evansville retained the President's Cup, beating Peoria in the final, with Matthew Hobbs named finals MVP.

A bench rebuilt from scratch

Kyle Sharkey had been appointed director of hockey operations and the eighth head coach in club history on 4 September 2024, promoted after a season running the defensive structure as an assistant. He was 31 and had won two SPHL championships as a player. On 6 April 2026, days after the season ended, he resigned. Neither he nor the club gave a reason beyond the next chapter of his career; Wall thanked him for three seasons with the organisation and the search began immediately.

The replacement arrived on 29 May 2026. Garrett Rutledge became the ninth head coach in team history and director of hockey operations, coming from two seasons as an assistant with the OHL's Saginaw Spirit, who won the CHL's Memorial Cup in 2024. Before that he ran hockey operations and coached the FPHL's Twin City Thunderbirds — previously the Carolina Thunderbirds — from 2021 to 2023, making the play-offs in both years and taking the FPHL's coach of the year award in 2022-23.

Rutledge added Trevor Jewell as assistant coach on 10 June 2026. Jewell, 37, from Belgrade, Montana, spent a decade with the USPHL's Charlotte Rush, head coach there from 2023-24 and a winner of three USPHL national titles. He played in the SPHL himself with Huntsville and Bloomington between 2012 and 2014 after four years at Johnson & Wales. Wade Clubb is also listed as an assistant on the club's hockey operations page. Kyle Sherrill, head athletic trainer, is in his eighth season with the Marksmen and has worked in minor-league hockey in Fayetteville since 2007.

Who is actually on the ice

The Marksmen released their protected list on 22 May 2026, a week before Rutledge was hired: eight forwards in Sam Dabrowski, Marcus Fechko, Kyler Head, Blake Humphrey, Graeme McCrory, Shane Murphy, Ryan Nolan and Evan Pringle; three defencemen in Ayodele Adeniye, Coltan Wilkie and John Woernle; and goaltenders Ryan Kenny and Colby Muise.

The signing run through late summer has been steady rather than spectacular, which is normal for a league where rosters turn over most of the way each year. William White was brought back on 31 August, forward Servizzi added on 26 August, Brendan Doyle signed on 24 August. September brought rookie goaltender Kyle Curtin on the 2nd, Adeniye's second season in Fayetteville confirmed on the 7th, Sipperley signed on the 9th after a season in France, Alex Davis returning on the 14th and former Birmingham forward Cremen on the 16th. A pre-season exhibition against the Pee Dee Icecats was announced on 27 August.

The building, and the trouble next door

The Crown Coliseum holds 8,500 and was not built for hockey, which is the single fact that shapes a night there: the Marksmen draw well for the level and the room still looks half full. In 2024-25 they averaged 4,281 across 28 home dates, 119,854 in total — solid mid-table for the SPHL, a long way behind league-leading Huntsville's 6,247.

The wider Crown Complex is in trouble, though not the part the hockey team uses. Cumberland County closed the Crown Arena and the Crown Theatre on 10 September 2026 after structural engineers found the Theatre's exterior walls and the Arena's concrete floor need demolishing and rebuilding; the board of commissioners formally voted on the 16th. Between 18 and 24 events have to be rehoused, some of them into the Coliseum itself. Renovation estimates that started at $80-100 million will now go higher. The county had already cancelled a $145 million downtown replacement venue in June 2025 in favour of fixing the old buildings. The Coliseum, and therefore the Marksmen's season, is unaffected.

A longer season in a bigger league

The SPHL board of governors voted to expand from 58 games to 60 for 2026-27, announced from Huntersville on 2 January 2026, with each of the 14 clubs playing 30 at home and 30 away. Commissioner Doug Price tied the move to the league's growth and to the Mobile Mysticks joining for 2027-28.

The map has changed around Fayetteville too. The Athens Rock Lobsters' move into the SPHL was confirmed on 13 May 2026, and the Pee Dee Icecats were conditionally approved on 30 May and fully admitted on 24 June — the latter a short drive across the border in South Carolina and an obvious rival in the making.

Fayetteville opens on the road at the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs on 16 October 2026 at 7.05pm, then hosts the same opponent the following night. For a club that has just missed the play-offs with a squad of 13 protected players and a coaching staff hired in the summer, 60 games is a lot of runway and a lot of rope.