Lulu.com founder Bob Young to be part owner of RailHawks

By Tim Candon

Oct 8, 2008

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The Carolina RailHawks hope to remove all doubt about their future with the revelation that Bob Young has purchased an ownership stake in the USL First Division team in Cary.

Young is the founder and CEO of Lulu.com, a self-publishing web site headquartered in Morrisville. Prior to launching Lulu.com a few years ago, Young was the CEO of Red Hat, Inc., an RTP company dedicated to free and open source software and a Linux distribution vendor.

At Red Hat, Young served on the company’s board of directors with Selby Wellman, who along with son Brian are the RailHawks’ majority owners. Paul Singh is also a part of the team’s ownership group.

“Selby Wellman is the smartest guy I know,” Young said by phone Tuesday evening. “Any project Selby is involved in, Selby has to be successful. I’m just pleased to be Selby’s partner. … I just always had a lot of respect for Selby so we when approached me, I jumped at the chance.”

While Young has made his fortune in software, he’s no stranger to sports ownership. He has owned his hometown Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League since 2003.

“He’s completely in sync with us and what we’re doing,” Brian Wellman said. “The team has never been stronger from a financial standpoint, and never stronger from a leadership standpoint.”

On Monday, Chris Economides, who founded the RailHawks in 2006 and served as the team’s president and general manager, finalized the sale of his remaining interest in the club. He is no longer with the team. With Young joining the ownership group, Wellman expects any talk that the team might fold to subside.

“I don’t know where folding came from,” Wellman said. “The finance of our club has never been stronger. … We’ve positioned our club for success moving forward.”

Young has no qualms about the future of the team, either.

“Sports, and soccer in particular, is a rapidly growing part of our economy, and the RailHawks are going to be a big franchise over the next few years,” he said. “It’s a good quality of soccer and it’s only getting better. And this area is a hotbed of soccer. The combination of those two trend lines bodes very well.”

Schweitzer resigns

The RailHawks also announced Tuesday that Scott Schweitzer would not return for a third season as the team’s head coach. Schweitzer went 24-24-24 overall (17-23-18 in USL-1) and guided the RailHawks to a pair of eighth-place finishes in his two seasons at the helm.

Last season, the RailHawks’ 8-12-8 mark was enough to get them into the playoffs, where they were eliminated in the first round. This season the USL-1 postseason offered only seven bids.

The RailHawks went 9-11-10 and finished two points out of seventh place. “I enjoyed my two years with the RailHawks and I am proud of what we built on the field,” Schweitzer said in a team-issued statement. “There was simply a difference of opinion between myself and the ownership group. I wish all the players that gave everything to me and the organization all the best.”