For 26 seasons, the Pittsburgh Riverhounds have played, moved to multiple venues, shut down operations for a season, reopened, found a permanent home and finally stable ownership as part of a long path to playing for a league championship.<\/p>\n
In front of what will be a hostile crowd of 10,000 on Saturday, the last leg on this long journey finally will be at hand. With a win against the USL Western Conference champion FC Tulsa Scissorhands at ONEOK Field, a near-three-decade struggle can end.<\/p>\n
CBS will televise the game nationally beginning at noon. <\/p>\n
Even with a loss to the West\u2019s No. 1 seed \u2014 which hasn\u2019t lost at home since mid-April, owns a plus-20 goal differential and a 609-minute shutout streak and employs the USL\u2019s second-leading goal scorer in Taylor Calheira \u2014 by every metric, this season was a rousing success.<\/p>\n
The cherry on top would be that elusive championship.<\/p>\n
Team president Jeff Garner, who, in 2021, was part of the Orange County USL Championship title run, praised the club for its historic efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see it, all the work that we\u2019ve put in as an organization in the atmosphere that was there in the semifinal and conference final,\u201d he said before the team departed for Tulsa on Thursday. \u201cHaving Highmark Stadium packed, about as packed as it could be, that home-field advantage, it\u2019s always beneficial in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great as an organization, it\u2019s great for momentum, it\u2019s great for the fans, and it\u2019s great reward for us. We\u2019ve worked hard all season. The job\u2019s not done yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a group of fans from Pittsburgh making the trip, the Riverhounds should have some support on their side. One of those is the president of the Steel Army, Arianna Lower, who joined nearly 50 fans Friday in taking a Greyhound bus to the title game.<\/p>\n
\u201cEighteen hours, leaving from Highmark, that will be nice.\u201d Lower said. \u201cIt\u2019s electric. The stands were packed to the gills for last Saturday, a historic event. This week leading up has also been exciting. I used to play as a kid at the club level. I\u2019ve seen European soccer, but to see it grow organically locally is special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tulsa was home to the Roughnecks of the old North American Soccer League. In 1983, on a miserly budget, they defeated the Toronto Blizzard, 2-0, in the \u201cSoccer Bowl\u201d to claim the state\u2019s first professional sports championship. Luke Spencer, in just his second season as coach of FC Tulsa, told a media gathering Thursday about what playing in this moment is like.<\/p>\n
He was a player for the 2018 USL Champion, Louisville FC.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving been through it, some of the things are different from a production standpoint. The walkout. The ceremony. A lot of the noise around us,\u201d he said. \u201cIt can be good attention, but it can also be a distraction from our process all season.\u201d <\/p>\n
Added Spencer on a conference call Thursday: \u201cThe experiences that I\u2019ve been through as a player to play in finals to get to this point can be drawn on.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Rob Vincent, his run as the Hounds\u2019 acting manager in the absence of Bob Lilley, who is still on administrative leave, has been nothing short of remarkable. The Stockport County, England, native and member of the organization since 2013 when he signed as a player said the club has a plan for the high-octane opponent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are a high-pressing team. They are going to be at home, so they\u2019re going to have a lot of energy. So that\u2019s going to be part of it,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cThey are a little more direct when they have possession. They are very effective at what they do. They can score goals, they are hard to break down, but I think there is a slight underdog element to it all for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eric Dick, the team\u2019s goaltender, spoke about the keys to taking down FC Tulsa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have a confident group that will execute the plan we have in place,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it gets to PKs, I am fully confident in our guys to knock them down, but we want to end it in regulation.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefensively, we will be sound but challenged. We will embrace those and go out and execute.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Phillips is a TribLive contributing writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 26 seasons, the Pittsburgh Riverhounds have played, moved to multiple venues, shut down operations for a season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-298765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}