Lexington

Lexington, Kentucky is horse country, and the club took its nickname from the rail at the track — the Railbirds, for the people who lean on the fence to watch the morning work. The green and black come from the hills of the Bluegrass.

For the first two seasons the football was played somewhere else entirely. Lexington SC rented Toyota Stadium in Georgetown while a ground of its own went up on Shives Drive. That opened on 8 September 2024, holds 7,500 and is built so it can be pushed out to 11,000.

The club was registered on 5 October 2021 under the name Lexington Pro Soccer and became Lexington Sporting Club in March. The men's side spent 2023 and 2024 in USL League One finishing ninth, went out of the US Open Cup in the first round to Vermont Green FC, and moved up to the USL Championship in 2025 under Terry Boss.

The trophy came from the women's team. Maren McCrary's side won the Players' Shield across the 2025–26 USL Super League season and then beat Carolina Ascent FC 3–1 in the final on 30 May 2026 — a title inside the club's first full decade of existence, and inside the second season of the competition itself. Allie Brown, capped by the United States, was part of that squad.

The fixture that matters most to Lexington is with Louisville City FC, 80 miles west along Interstate 64. Two cities that spend the rest of the year measuring themselves against each other now have a football match to do it in, and the meetings carry their own prize, the Commonwealth Cup. Lexington arrived in the Championship as the newer, smaller operation of the two; the history between them adds an edge that has nothing to do with the league table.