I know I’m late to the party, but Happy New Year! And Happy New Decade too!

The naughties have given way to the teens, the second decade of this 21st century of the Common Era. And with it, new opportunities rise for sports in Orlando.

The Amway Center is opening this fall. Hopefully it will come with the raising of a Magic NBA Championship banner.

With that, Amway Arena will close shortly before. And it will close the way it was imagined to: with an Orlando Predators game. And maybe, hopefully, an ArenaBowl will be the last event held there.

The Tuskers will return in 2010. And they will be playing on FieldTurf whether they like it or not.

The Kraze, the Surge and Orlando F.C. will play their developmental amateur soccer in Sanford beginning this spring.

But it all starts this Friday when a new sport, indoor lacrosse, takes the stage with the Orlando Titans.

We in Orlando have always embraced minor-leaguer teams and alternative sports. From our myriad pro football teams (the Panthers of the CPFL, the Renegades of the USFL, the Thunder of WLAF/NFL Europa, the Rage of the XFL, the current Tuskers), to our ice hockey teams (the Solar Bears and Seals), to spring training (Twins, Astros, Braves), to soccer (the Lions and Sundogs), and various alternative sports (roller hockey’s Orlando Jackals, Xtreme Baseball, RollerJam, hosting WCW and TNA wrestling).

I hope to see a lot of you at the Amway Arena for the Titans home opener on Friday. I think it will be a great sport. If you miss ice hockey, you’ll love indoor lacrosse. There are a lot of similarities, except you don’t use skates.

Here’s hoping for many years of sporting joy and happiness, and an enlightened new decade where Orlando and sports raise each other.

I love our FBS college football team. They’re so bipolar this year.

The UCF Knights waited until 8 minutes left in the game to begin their usual second-half rally, down 20-7 going into the fourth quarter. They scored the winning touchdown with 23 seconds to go to win, 21-20.

That’s beyond coming back from the brink. That’s like waking up in the morgue when they’re about to cut you open to begin an autopsy.

The Knights are now 3-2 in the C-USA East, which is classified as “barely alive”. At least this weekend’s expected loss @ #2 Texas won’t change things.

Speaking of the Knights, their women’s soccer team are #8 in the nation and headed to the Conference USA tournament with the outright regular-season title and #1 seed. (New rankings, by the NSCAA, will be released tomorrow.) They finish the regular season with a record of 15-3-1, and are a certainty to advance to the NCAA tournament.

The C-USA tournament begins this weekend in Dallas. I will keep you all posted on how the Knights do. They do have a big soccer history, including an appearance in the finals of the very first Division I women’s soccer tournament in 1983, where they lost to North Carolina, 1-0. We are the home institution of FIFA 100 member Michelle Akers, and our current starting goalkeeper, sophomore Aline Ries, recently got her first cap (cap = appearance) with the Brazilian women’s national soccer team.

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I would like to call attention to another minor soccer team in the area, the FLORIDA SURGE. They are our amateur women’s soccer team. Like the other two, the Kraze and Orlando F.C., they play in Sanford at the Seminole Soccer Complex. This past year they were 2nd out of 6 in the Sunshine Conference with a 6-2-2 record, missing out on the Women’s Premier Soccer League playoffs with a last-day loss to Miami.

So yeah, we have plenty of soccer here, we just need to make more people aware of it.