Song by Ford Employee’s Band Makes Playlist for Cincinnati’s Pro Soccer Team

Ford employee Mikal Crist was on his feet at TQL Stadium as FC Cincinnati celebrated a soccer win. Then he heard it — his song, his voice — booming through the speakers to a crowd of 25,000 screaming fans. 

“Three Point Night,” the tune Crist wrote and recorded as a tribute to his beloved FC Cincinnati, has become part of the pro team’s game-day playlist. Since debuting last spring, it has been streamed nearly 20,000 times on Spotify. The attention was unexpected yet thrilling for Crist, a machine repair apprentice at Ford’s Sharonville Transmission Plant. 

“It was one of the best feelings I’ve experienced,” he said, recalling the night of Sept. 13, 2025, when he and his bandmates first heard the song played live in the stadium. “We were all there and so were our entire families. We were jumping around singing the song at the top of our lungs, telling everyone who would listen that it was our song.” 

The pieces for “Three Point Night” fell into place a few years ago when two of Crist’s passions outside work — music and soccer — came together by chance. 

It started with Crist first meeting his future bandmates. Their young daughters were all friends. As the dads got to know each other, they discovered a mutual interest in music. Crist, a lead singer and guitarist, was in a band during his 20s, and Steve Ashmore played bass guitar, and Jacob Shidler played drums.  

The three dads decided to take the next step and form the band, ASTROVAN, making music in a style they call “outlaw indie rock.” As they began jamming, Crist brought in a soccer-inspired song, titled “Three Point Night.”  

The title references the sport’s scoring system in which a win earns three points in league standings. The lyrics are also influenced by soccer with nods to FC Cincinnati, the “boys in Orange and Blue,” and the game-day ritual of fans “Marchin’ to the match” from their tailgating zone. 

“I wrote ‘Three Point Night’ out of a love of football — the game, the players, the atmosphere,” Crist said, using the international name for the sport. 

Ashmore and Shidler loved the song, so the band recorded it for fun. Since that time, ASTROVAN has added a fourth member, guitarist and keyboardist Eric Schroeder. 

The song’s path to FC Cincinnati and TQL Stadium’s speakers was helped by a few serendipitous connections and encounters.  

First, ASTROVAN and Cincinnati’s popular MadTree Brewing entered into a partnership. The band had played shows at the brewery, and then MadTree used “Three Point Night” on its Instagram page to promote its Orange & Blue Sway beverage, also a tribute to FC Cincinnati.  

Next, MadTree locations became the official pub partners of FC Cincinnati, and Sway became the team’s official canned cocktail. That’s when “Three Point Night” first hit the stadium’s jumbotron as part of MadTree’s 30-second Sway commercial that plays before every match. 

With those ties in place, the band took a chance while at a match and sent the song to FC Cincinnati’s in-game DJ, Prymtime. “We sent it and said, ‘This song would sound really good over the loudspeakers,’” Crist said. Prymtime didn’t play the song that day — but he reached out later.  

An FC Cincinnati spokesperson confirmed that if the moment feels right, “Three Point Night” could be played at TQL Stadium. It is a spur-of-the-moment decision left to Prymtime and the team’s game presentation group. 

The band chronicled the process on its Instagram account, sharing photos from recording sessions and thanking the club “for taking a chance on us and spinning our song.” 

“It felt like a dream fully realized,” said Crist, remembering the moment he heard the song in the stadium. “I was holding my daughter, spinning around, just feeling the purest form of joy you can imagine.” 

Listen to the full recording of “Three Point Night” on YouTube or Spotify.