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Arena Football One (AF1) has officially announced the Oregon Lightning as its latest expansion franchise, the fourth such new team. The Lightning will play home games starting in AF1’s inaugural season at the First Interstate Bank Center in Redmond, Oregon, approximately fifteen miles away from Bend, Oregon in the central part of the state.
The Lightning will be coached by former Oregon Blackbears head coach Chuck Jones who will also be a part owner of the Lightning franchise along with Sara Gumm and Jay Jenkins. The franchise will serve as a de facto replacement of the folded Blackbears of last year’s Arena Football League as a replacement rival for the Washington Wolfpack.
The Lightning are more precisely described though as a revived version of the Oregon High Desert Storm franchise that played from 2021 through 2023 in the American West Football Conference (AWFC). With the Storm nickname already being used in AF1 by the Southwest Kansas Storm, the new Lightning nickname was adopted.