A letter to our FSF Family

A sincere thank you

Dear Five Stripe Final readers and listeners,

I used to cringe and roll my eyes when I saw people on the internet call their fellow fans a “family”. It always felt a bit drastic or disingenuous. How can you consider hundreds or thousands of people you never met to be “family”?

Then came Hurricane Helene to suddenly and unexpectedly uproot my life.

One of the perks of living in Augusta is usually never having to worry about severe weather. So when suddenly at 3am on a Friday morning reports said that Helene was veering directly towards my city, I didn’t expect it to result in anything but some heavy rain and wind.

Ten days later and my outlook on how kind, compassionate, and generous complete strangers on the internet can be to their fellow human has been flipped upside down.

Having never experienced something like this, we were not prepared to withstand a long power outage in the heat. After revealing to Sam and Joe how just how dire my predicament was here with the whole city basically shutdown by the storm, they quickly jumped to action by asking for your help.

I can’t begin to express enough gratitude for the support everyone has shown through their donations and messages. Your quick and selfless contributions allowed Joe to purchase some invaluable cooling and emergency equipment for us to stick it out these last 10 days.

I obviously also have to say a huge thanks to Joe for taking over five hours to drive all the way here to drop off those supplies that helped me and my family so much during this whole ordeal.

The Five Stripe Final community and Atlanta United fans as a whole have reminded me exactly why we started this venture in the first place. We believe in how passionate you are about this team and the lengths you’ll go to support it and its surrounding entities.

Needless to say, this season hasn’t gone how anyone expected. It has been a miserable experience to watch as a fan of the team and just as unpleasant to cover as a media member. We had grand plans to cover this team from every aspect and provide you with the best insights as possible. However when we go months on end with the same type of performances and results, there really is no analysis or opinion that can attempt explain how the club got to where it currently finds itself.

Thankfully the season is almost over and the offseason promises to be the most eventful one since the start of 2017. I want to offer another sincere thanks to all of you who have stuck with us through this trying year no matter how repetitive or unenjoyable it may have been. I can only promise you that we are not going anywhere and will be here to provide the most honest and unbiased coverage of Atlanta United as they look to rebuild themselves into a team that’s actually fun to watch again.

If you have any feedback for us on our first season and how we can improve our coverage for you all, please leave a comment below. There’s still at least one more match in 2024, but this felt like the best time to write this as my power came back on today and I owe you all so much gratitude. So, thank you all so much for the support, both personally and professionally. Here’s to better days ahead.