Pittsburgh Riverhounds

Since 1998, the Riverhounds had gone through second-division football without a major trophy — three conference titles, a division crown, a Players' Shield for topping the regular-season table in 2023, but nothing that settled the argument. That changed in 2025, when Pittsburgh reached the USL Championship final and held off FC Tulsa through a scoreless ninety minutes before winning the penalty shoot-out 5-3, the first major honour in the club's history.

The name itself was a late change. The founding group, led by Paul Hazley, had planned to call the side the Pittsburgh Riverdogs, but switched to Riverhounds in December 1998 after the Charleston RiverDogs baseball club threatened legal action over the similarity. The club has moved grounds several times since, through Bethel Park, a spell playing out of Washington, Pennsylvania, and a stretch at Chartiers Valley High School, before settling at what is now F.N.B. Stadium in 2013, a 5,000-capacity ground the Hounds have called home ever since.

Black and gold became the club's colours in 2014, a deliberate alignment with Pittsburgh's other professional teams, replacing the red and blue kits worn in the club's first fifteen years. Among those who wore them, Kevin Kerr stands out: captain from 2013 to 2019, and the man who scored in the 2015 match still known locally as the "Miracle on Mon." Albert Dikwa gave the club its most recent individual honour, finishing 2023 as league MVP and top scorer with 41 goals.

No run in the club's history has lasted longer than the one against Charleston Battery, a fixture dating back to 1999 and still referred to as the Old Guard rivalry. The other derby that matters is closer to home: Keystone Derby games against Penn FC, the old Harrisburg City Islanders, carry their own weight regardless of where either side sits in the table.