In hindsight, the 1998 campaign would mark the beginning of an incredible three-year span in which the Minnesota Thunder and Rochester Raging Rhinos would find themselves facing one another in the championship game. The Rhinos run to that peak would come in impressive fashion.

The season began with a bang as former Saint Louis University star and A-League first round draft pick Kevin Quigley scored the first goal of the year on a 25-yard blast that gave Nashville a 1-0 win. The April 2 season opener meant an early start to accommodate the A-League’s steady growth from 24 to 28 teams and a schedule of 392 regular season games stretching into September.

In many ways, 1998 was the year of the rookie. At any given time during the course of the season, as many as four first-year players could be found among the league leaders in scoring. Charleston’s Mike Burke (who scored a goal in nine consecutive games), El Paso’s Kirk Wilson (who finished fourth in league scoring with 15 goals and seven assists), Cincinnati’s Jason Cairns (8 goals, 14 assists) and US Pro-40’s Josh Wolff (12 goals in 18 games) formed a fearsome foursome of young stars.

Another successful rookie was the San Diego Flash, competing in its inaugural A-League season after relocating the franchise from Colorado. The first-year Flash not only held their own in the stands and off the field, they compiled the best regular season record (21-7) in the Western Conference and finished ninth in the league in attendance (3,082).

It could also be argued that 1998 was the year of the Rhino as the A-League’s flagship franchise raised its on-field performance to the ultra-high level of its off-the-field successes. The Rhinos established the league’s best offense (72 goals) and defense (15 goals allowed) on the way to breaking the A-League mark with a 24-4 regular season record. On top of that, the Rhinos won the championship and boosted their average attendance to 11,500.

The Rhinos essentially ran away with the regular season title by opening the campaign with a league-record 13-game winning streak that continued a regular season win streak from the end of 1997 to a total of 16 over the course of the two seasons. The regular season champs then cruised to the A-League Final with a 3-0 conference quarterfinal win over Charleston, a semifinal series sweep of Montreal and a conference final series sweep of Hershey.

On the other side of the bracket, it was the Western Conference’s fourth-seeded Minnesota Thunder making noise. Despite having lost three of their last five games, the Thunder downed rival Milwaukee in the quarterfinal 5-1, swept Seattle in the semifinals and swept the conference’s top-seeded Flash in the conference finals series.

The championship was no match, however, as Rochester dominated the Thunder en route to a 3-1 victory at Frontier Field as Darren Tilley posted a hat-trick to give the hosts the victory in front of a sold-out crowd of over 12,000.

USL threw a unique twist into the annual showcase of the league’s best, pitting the full Hershey Wildcats side against an A-League select squad in the 1998 A-League All-Star Game at Hersheypark Stadium. To everyone’s amazement, the host team not only upset the All-Stars, but shut out the select squad 3-0 in front of 3,484 fans.