The 2023 Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC season is one that will stand out in the club’s history as the team turns the corner into its 25th season next year, as achievements both on and off the field exceeded previous highs in the team’s existence.
In a year that saw the team claim its first league trophy and garner increased attention both locally and from around the soccer world, the Riverhounds continued their upward trajectory with a series of collective and individual feats worth reflecting upon.
Looking back on the season that was, we begin with the opening of the trophy case.
Players’ Shield comes to the Steel City
With a 34-game schedule, the USL Championship schedule is longer than it has ever been, and no Hounds season in the Championship or precursor leagues featured more matches. But at the end of the six-month marathon that began in March, it was the Hounds who fared best out of the 24-team league when all was said and done.
The Hounds finished the regular season with a 19-5-10 record, and they clinched the Players’ Shield with a week to spare, coming up big in a 2-0 win on the road at their top Shield rivals out of the East, the Tampa Bay Rowdies. The team’s 67 points was the second-highest total in history, trailing only the 68 of the 2019 team that topped the Eastern Conference, and the Hounds matched the USL Championship record for home wins in a single season with 13.
The team’s consistency was its strength. After working its way into form through March and April, the team only failed to win in consecutive matches twice after the start of May, and only once all season did it lose consecutive matches. From April 29 through July 15, the Hounds did not lose a league match — a span of 13 matches — a streak made more impressive by having the team’s U.S. Open run happening concurrently.
By winning the Shield, it was the first time the Hounds have finished atop the second division in U.S. Soccer. (The 2004 team that went 17-2-1 had the best record in the USL Pro Soccer League, which was then the third tier.) Most importantly, it was the team’s first league-wide trophy, attaching a tangible prize to the club’s run of success with six straight winning seasons under coach Bob Lilley.
Open Cup run to remember
Amidst all the regular-season winning, the Hounds also put together the longest run in the U.S. Open Cup in team history, coming just two rounds away from the final and a chance to be this year’s champions of U.S. Soccer.
Strangely enough, the march to the quarterfinals began with a win that didn’t require a single kick of the ball. MLS Next Pro side Rochester New York FC ceased operations after the second round draw, advancing the Hounds to the third round, where they dispatched NISA side Maryland Bobcats FC, 2-0.
The fourth round delivered the Hounds the MLS opponent they wanted but not the venue. Still, a road game against the New England Revolution provided plenty of storylines, not the least of which was Lilley squaring off with then-Revolution coach Bruce Arena — a matchup of No. 1 and No. 2 on the list of pro club wins by an active coach in the U.S. The match produced a storybook ending, as well, with New England native Danny Griffin scoring the only goal for a 1-0 win over the Revolution.
It had been 22 years from the Hounds’ first win over an MLS team — in 2001 over the Colorado Rapids — to the second. It only took two weeks for the third such win.
A Highmark Stadium-record crowd of 6,107 clad all in white descended upon Station Square on May 24 for a Round of 16 match against the Columbus Crew, and the Hounds’ performance matched the crowd’s energy. Albert Dikwa scored after 22 minutes from a beautiful ball passed through the defense by Robbie Mertz, and the Hounds ceded just three shots on goal to knock off yet another MLS team, 1-0.
The set up a quarterfinal sending the eventual Players’ Shield winners on the road to face the would-be MLS Supporters’ Shield winners, FC Cincinnati. It was only the Hounds’ second Open Cup quarterfinal (2001), and the first time the team played five rounds in the tournament.
The Hounds again were up for the challenge at Cincinnati, battling through a scoreless first half. But Cincinnati benefitted from a goal later shown to have been offside by Brandon Vazquez, and they further opened up the margin with a Puskás Award nominee volleyed home by Álvaro Barreal — almost certainly the goal of 2023 domestically in any competition. The Hounds’ splendid run ended with a 3-1 loss in the quarterfinal, one round short of a semifinal date hosting Inter Miami and Lionel Messi, but still earned the team tons of new fans and the prize as the farthest-advancing lower division team.
Dikwa’s golden year
For his hard work over three seasons, always with his trademark smile on display, Dikwa already had become a favorite with Hounds fans before the 2023 season. But even the most optimistic predictions before the year might not have seen what the 25-year-old striker had in store.
Starting with a Week 2 hat trick at Memphis, Dikwa put together one of the best scoring seasons in Riverhounds history and won the USL Championship Golden Boot. The striker bagged 20 goals in league play and added his Columbus game-winner to make it a lucky 21 for the year, tying the mark for the second-most goals in a single season for the Hounds despite missing a month in early summer with a broken collarbone.
The historic flurry of goals elevated Dikwa to rare territory; his 37 goals for the Hounds are second only to all-time leader David Flavius, who scored 62 in the first eight seasons of the team’s existence. The honors likely aren’t done for the native of Cameroon, who will find out next month if he will be named a USL Championship MVP finalist or has landed his first USL All-League honor.
Plenty more individual accolades
While Dikwa’s Golden Boot grabbed headlines, Hounds players produced many more achievements throughout the 2023 season.
- Arturo Ordóñez became the first Hounds’ center back — and only the second defender at any position — to score five goals in a season. The team’s minutes leader with 2,868 in the regular season is also an All-League candidate after his 120 clearances led the team for a second straight year.
- Kenardo Forbes, the ever-steady captain of the team, became the first player to have back-to-back 10-assist seasons in the Championship to run his league record to 65 career assists. Already with a club record 54 assists for the Hounds, the Jamaican midfielder has played 192 matches in Pittsburgh, which is just three behind Flavius for the most in Riverhounds history.
- While Danny Griffin continued his personal Iron Man streak of 117 consecutive league matches since turning pro, he only rejoined the Hounds in May after a transfer from Huntsville in MLS Next Pro. That means the Hounds’ Iron Man title in 2023 goes to Marc Ybarra, the only player to appear in all 39 competitive matches for the team this season. A second-year pro, Ybarra also assisted Griffin’s goal in the Open Cup win at New England and scored his first pro goal in a breakout season.
- During the season, Griffin appeared in his 100th match for the Hounds, as did his longtime teammate Dani Rovira. In addition to becoming the 16th Hounds player to hit the century mark (Griffin was No. 15), Rovira also upped his career total to 13 assists with the Hounds, the most by a defender in club history.
- Junior Etou made his mark all season as a tough-tackling holding midfielder and wing back, but he was also the author of one of the team’s most surprising highlights. His goal in the team’s 2-0 win over Charleston on June 10 came just 21 seconds into the match, making it the fastest goal in both Hounds and Highmark Stadium history.
- In another piece of team history, center back Joe Farrell scored the club’s 1,000th goal all-time in a 4-2 win over Memphis on July 29.
- The Hounds again led the league in clean sheets with 15 this season, 10 of them coming with Jahmali Waite in goal. Waite firmly established himself as Jamaica’s No. 2 this year and made five starts for his country in 2023, and his second year with the club ended with him already third on the all-time shutouts list with 20.
- In total, 15 players scored goals for the Hounds this season and 19 players had goal contributions (goal or assist), while three different goalkeepers recorded clean sheets.
- Dikwa was named Championship Player of the Week once and was twice a finalist for Player of the Month (May & Sept.). Overall, a Hounds player was honored in the Team of the Week — starter or bench — in 21 of a possible 31 weeks of the Championship season. (The Hounds did not have a match during one game week.)
All eyes on the Hounds
As much excitement as there was on the field, nowhere was it reflected more than in the grandstand, where the Hounds received the sort of support that was lacking through much of the team’s barnstorming years and at times in Highmark Stadium’s nascent seasons.
The top-line number — an average of 5,012 fans for the 17 regular-season matches — eclipsed the team’s previous attendance record that had stood since the 1999 inaugural season, a year with both the novelty of a new club and the benefit of the higher capacity at Bethel Park High School. Thirteen of those 17 regular-season contests were officially sellouts, the most in a season at Highmark Stadium.
Those numbers come before factoring in the Hounds’ Open Cup and USL Championship Playoff matches, through which the previous Highmark Stadium attendance record was eclipsed twice.
Date | Opponent | Attendance | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
October 23, 2023 | Detroit City FC | 6,123 | USL Championship Playoffs, Stadium record |
May 24, 2023 | Columbus Crew | 6,107 | U.S. Open Cup |
November 2, 2019 | Louisville City FC | 6,073 | USL Championship Playoffs |
September 30, 2023 | FC Tulsa | 6,045 | Regular-season record |
October 19, 2019 | Birmingham Legion FC | 5,627 | USL Championship Playoffs |
In addition to the fans in the seats, fans at home were tuning into the Hounds more than ever.
According to the USL’s most recent data (numbers for the final month of the season were not yet available), the Hounds’s matches were the second-most-watched of the 24 Championship clubs across local and national streaming on ESPN+. Local viewership was at an all-time high for the team in the first year of the Hounds’ partnership with KDKA+, and, through the team’s U.S. Open Cup run, Hounds matches were also carried this year on CBS Sports Network, Bleacher Report’s B/R Football and the U.S. Soccer Federation’s YouTube channel.
Features on Hounds players were seen throughout the season by Pittsburgh audiences on both KDKA and WTAE, and listeners were treated to a regular Hounds’ segment on the day before home matches on 105.9 the X’s The Mark Madden Show. A national TV audience also got the chance to meet Danny Griffin on CBS Sports Golazo — he even made the show’s “Best Dressed” segment — while Griffin, Coach Lilley and others were guests on SiriusXM FC soccer shows such as Counter Attack, United States of Soccer and USL All-Access.
All totaled, there was plenty to take note of during the Riverhounds’ 2023 season, and people were taking notice in record numbers. That sets the stage for an encore in 2024, as the club aims to take further leaps forward as it celebrates 25 years of pro soccer in Pittsburgh.