Frank DuRoss, Steve Donner and Chris Economides founded the Raging Rhinos in 1996, with Pat Ercoli as coach.^1,8 The team started at the University of Rochester's Fauver Stadium, then moved downtown to Frontier Field, a new minor league baseball park.¹ Its first game there was the first sporting event in the building: a 3–2 win over the Montreal Impact in front of 14,717 people, an A-League record.¹⁷

The expansion team reached the A-League final in its first year. It also reached the Open Cup final by beating two MLS teams at home, the Tampa Bay Mutiny 4–3 in extra time and the Colorado Rapids 3–0. D.C. United won the final 3–0 at RFK Stadium on October 30.^1,6

Rochester averaged more than 10,000 a game for most of the next decade, peaking at 11,628 in 2000. The team won A-League titles in 1998, 2000 and 2001, and went 24–4 in the 1998 regular season.¹ A local writer later called it “the toughest ticket in town.”¹⁶

Those crowds made Rochester a strong candidate for MLS expansion, and some players felt they belonged in the league.^2,4 The call never came. When MLS teams arrived for the Open Cup in 1999, the fans had a chant ready.³

The 1999 run

Rochester entered as defending A-League champions. Yari Allnutt's header beat the Chicago Fire, the MLS and Open Cup holders, 1–0 in a match with 45 fouls. Michael Kirmse's golden goal then beat Dallas in front of 10,730, after which Dallas coach Dave Dir compared the Rhinos to “11 Dennis Rodmans.”²

The semifinal against Columbus was played at a neutral site in Virginia Beach as Hurricane Dennis, by then a tropical storm, brought high wind and rain. Rochester trailed 2–1 with four minutes left. Scott Schweitzer's free kick tied it in the 86th minute, and Tim Hardy won it in stoppage time.^2,5

The final drew 4,555 to Columbus, including several hundred fans who made the 400-mile trip. Doug Miller came off the bench and scored within minutes, and Allnutt added a second at the end while Pat Onstad kept Colorado out.^2,3 The team lost that year's A-League final to the Minnesota Thunder.²

Mickey Trotman

Trotman, a Trinidad and Tobago international midfielder, played 11 games for Rochester in 2001. He died in a road accident in Port of Spain on October 1, 2001, at 26, along with his wife and brother.¹⁴ The club retired his No. 14. Doug Miller's No. 19 is the only other number it retired.¹

The club wanted its own ground. A proposal for a 20,000-seat, $49.3 million stadium in the suburb of Gates was dropped, and by 2002 the talk had moved to a smaller stadium downtown, partly pitched as the way to win an MLS team.⁹

PAETEC Park opened three blocks from Frontier Field on June 3, 2006, with 13,768 seats and most of the roughly $30 million bill paid by New York State.^7,17 The team reached the league final that year.¹ But the cost overruns left debt the owners could not carry. In early 2008 the stadium's builder and NBT Bank both sued them, the bank for more than $10 million.^8,18

In March 2008 Utica businessman Rob Clark bought the club, settling $10.6 million in unpaid loans with the bank, the city and the league and signing a 15-year lease on the stadium.⁸ He also dropped “Raging” from the name.¹

The crowds kept shrinking after the sale, to 5,339 a game by 2011. The team still competed, winning the 2010 regular-season title in a temporary Division 2 league before moving to USL Pro in 2011.¹ Ercoli returned as interim coach in 2013, a year that ended without a playoff place and included a 5–1 Open Cup loss to New England.^1,3

Bob Lilley came back in 2014, and in 2015 his team lost once in 34 games in all competitions.¹² In the USL final on October 16 at home, LA Galaxy II led until second-half stoppage time. Asani Samuels equalized, then scored the winner in extra time for a 2–1 victory.¹²

Three months after that title the club lost its owner. The city revoked the stadium lease, and in January 2016 the USL ended the Clark family's ownership.^1,11 In March the league announced David and Wendy Dworkin, Rochester real estate developers, as the new owners, with a 10-year stadium lease and more than $1 million in renovations.¹¹

Attendance fell to 3,655 in 2016 and 2,031 in 2017. The owners said they lost about $1.5 million in 2016, and they asked the community for about $1.3 million to play in 2018.¹⁰ On November 30, 2017, the Rhinos announced a hiatus.¹

A planned return slipped from 2020 to 2022. On September 1, 2021, the club rebranded as Rochester New York FC, with a crest based on the High Falls waterfall. English striker Jamie Vardy had been announced as a co-owner that June, and he later said his stake was a publicity stunt.¹

RNYFC played 2022 in MLS Next Pro, the only team in the league without an MLS parent. It had no stadium of its own and used temporary bleachers at Monroe Community College, averaging 1,096 a game and reaching the quarterfinals.^1,13

On March 10, 2023, days before its second season, the club ceased operations. A deal to sell a majority stake had collapsed the week before closing, and the owners said they saw no path to sustainability.^1,13

The stadium is still downtown, owned by the city and run as the Rochester Community Sports Complex. Flower City Union, founded in 2020, has played there since 2022.^7,15 Frontier Field is now ESL Ballpark.¹⁷ As of 2026, the 1999 Rhinos are still the only lower-division winner of the Open Cup since MLS began.⁵