Vaprus

The sports society carrying the name was founded in Pärnu in 1922. It merged into Pärnu Kalev 15 years later, and the name did not return to Estonian football until 1999, when the current JK Vaprus started again from nothing. Even that revival was not continuous: from 2011 to 2013 the club folded its identity into Pärnu Linnameeskond before pulling back out on its own again.

Promotion has become something the club does more than once rather than a single achievement. It reached the Meistriliiga, Estonia's top flight, for the first time in 2005, the year it also won the Esiliiga title below it. It went down, came back up in 2017, slipped again, and returned once more in 2020 by winning the Esiliiga a second time. The climb before that ran through the lower divisions too, with a II Liiga title in 2004 and a III Liiga title in 2000. Two amateur-era Pärnu championships came earlier still, in 1927 and 1934, before the war.

Sergei Zenjov, Estonia's captain, came through Vaprus's own youth system before his career took him elsewhere. Karl Palatu went the other way: an international footballer who played for the club in 2017 and 2018, he stayed on afterwards and now works as its sporting director. Igor Prins has been head coach since 2023.

The club plays in yellow and black and is known as the Bears — yellow shirt and socks with black sleeves and shorts at home, all black away. Home games are played at Pärnu Rannastaadion, a ground on the coast that holds 1,501 people.