The offseason gets shorter every year, and coming up this Monday, Jan. 27, another offseason will end when the Riverhounds open their preseason camp for the 2025 season in the cozy confines of the AHN Montour Sports Complex.
That Jan. 27 date is notable, because it is the earliest start date for a preseason in club history, one made necessary because of an earlier-than-ever date to start the USL Championship regular season on March 8.
Using that small piece of trivia as a jumping-off point, we’ve prepared for the new season by assembling some of the important stats, odd facts and trivial minutiae about the Riverhounds, Highmark Stadium and more.
A second quarter-century begins
• 2025 will be the 26th season of Riverhounds soccer, matching the number of years the Pittsburgh Hornets of the American Hockey League played in the city before disbanding after the 1966-67 season. With that milestone, the Hounds’ tenure as a fully professional sports team in Pittsburgh is exceeded only by the other three in operation currently — the Pirates (143 years), Steelers (92 years) and Penguins (58 years).
(One possible exception for the history buffs: The Homestead Grays of baseball’s Negro leagues began in the Pittsburgh area and operated for 38 years. However, the club played as a barnstorming team for nearly two decades before formally joining a professional league in 1929. By 1943, the team was playing more than half of its home games in Washington, D.C., and the Grays disbanded in 1951.)
• This will be the 13th season the Riverhounds play at Highmark Stadium. That means at the end of the season, the South Shore venue will have been the home of the Hounds for exactly half of the team’s history.
• The Hounds are two home wins from their 100th at Highmark Stadium. The team enters 2025 with a 98-49-55 record in all competitions at Highmark.
• Having qualified for the USL Championship Playoffs in each of the past seven seasons, the Hounds have the second-longest active streak in the Championship behind only Louisville City FC. That is also the longest such streak among any of Pittsburgh’s four professional teams, and the Hounds are also the only one to be above .500 every year since 2018.
Milestones in reach for players & coaches
• Eric Dick made a name for himself in his first year as the Hounds goalkeeper, riding a strong second half of the season to the Championship’s Goalkeeper of the Year award. After setting a single-season club record with 14 shutouts, he comes into 2025 already tied for fifth on the all-time club leaderboard. The leader remains club Hall of Famer Randy Dedini, who had 29 clean sheets from 1999-2003.
• Club stalwarts Kenardo Forbes (226), Danny Griffin (150) and Robbie Mertz (135) are the three active Hounds with 100 appearances for the team; that group shrunk by one with the departure in free agency of Dani Rovira, who left seventh with 139 matches played. Next in line to join the century club? Fourth-year defender Luke Biasi, who has appeared in 80 matches over his first three seasons in Pittsburgh.
• Forbes and Mertz check in as the active leaders in goals for the club with 19 and 18, respectively, making them the leading candidates to hit 20 goals for the Riverhounds, a feat achieved by 12 players in team history.
• Griffin’s 150 games comes with a quirky pair of statistics that underline his tireless work rate marshaling the midfield while not crossing the line into dirty play. Griffin has been booked 25 times in his career, the most in Hounds history, yet his 150 games are the most by a Hounds player who has never been shown a red card in a match.
• Head coach Bob Lilley goes into his 25th season as a professional head coach still boasting the remarkable streak of having never had a losing season or missing the playoffs. With 405 wins, he also remains the active wins leader among coaches in American pro leagues. His total includes 23 wins leading the Detroit Ignition in the indoor MISL, placing Lilley’s outdoor pro wins total at 382. That means the Hounds’ boss needs 18 wins to reach 400 victories leading teams in American professional outdoor leagues, another milestone not reached by any coach across MLS, USL (all pro leagues), NASL (in both its incarnations), NWSL and earlier American leagues with readily available records.
Way-too-early roster breakdown
• As of Jan. 22, the Hounds have 15 players under contract. Based off previous seasons, leaves approximately 7-9 open spots to be filled on the roster.
• Thirteen of the 15 players were with the team a season ago, which is the most returning players off a previous season’s end-of-year roster since the 2006 season, when the Hounds also returned 13 players.
• Forbes is still the senior member of the roster at age 36 and in his eighth season with the club, while the youngest among the current roster is first-year pro Brigham Larsen at age 22. Next by age are Junior Etou and Dick, both 30, while next by seniority with the club are Mertz and Griffin, both in their sixth season.
• Ten of the current Hounds are American, with eight different states represented; both Jackson Walti and Charles Ahl call Florida home. Other countries represented on the roster are Jamaica (Forbes), Ghana (Illal Osumanu), Norway (Larsen), France (Bertin Jacquesson and Etou) and the Republic of the Congo (also Etou, who was born in the capital, Brazzaville, but raised in Paris).
Where are we going, and who are these guys?
• With few changes to the makeup of the USL Championship, nearly all of the team’s road trips will be to familiar venues. The first new stop, in an unofficial sense, will come when the Hounds visit Lexington SC for a Feb. 28 preseason match, though the exhibition won’t count on the team’s official records.
• Perhaps the most famous venue on the Hounds’ 2025 schedule is an old one, yet a new one to us: Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. The stadium that became famous as the “Black Hole” for the NFL’s Oakland Raiders is the new, temporary home of Oakland Roots SC, and the Hounds will visit on Sept. 6. While the Raiders have since vacated the premises, the Coliseum will go down as the fourth current/former NFL stadium to host the Hounds, joining the Tennessee Titans’ Nissan Stadium (Nashville SC, 2018), the Indianapolis Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium (Indy Eleven, 2018-20) and the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium (New England Revolution, 2023).
• The addition of the Jägermeister Cup competition will pit the Hounds against two new foes out of USL League One. The team on June 28 will host Westchester SC, a new club unrelated to the Westchester Flames that once battled the Hounds in the old USL Pro Soccer League. Later, on July 26, comes a visit to Portland Hearts of Pine. And, of course, this year’s U.S. Open Cup will also present an opportunity to face new opponents as the Hounds bid to reach the quarterfinals for the third time and progress farther.
• The match against Hearts of Pine will be played at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland, Maine, marking the first time the Riverhounds have ever visited the Pine Tree State. Maine will be the 35th state the club has played in — not to mention the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and the nations of Bermuda and Antigua — and it will leave Vermont, Delaware and Mississippi as the only U.S. states East of the Mississippi River where the Hounds have never played a match.
