Fort Worth Vaqueros

The Vaqueros are in USL League Two this year, the step up from the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL), where they spent their first years. A club that used to measure itself against Midland-Odessa and Denton now plays a wider schedule.

The route to it ran through 2019. That year Fort Worth won the NPSL Lone Star Conference, beating Midland-Odessa FC 2-1 in the final. In the playoffs they had needed an 8-round penalty shootout to get past Denton Diablos FC in the quarter-final, then lost 4-1 to Miami FC in the South Region final. The conference title carried a place in the 2020 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. The pandemic cancelled that tournament, so the club never played the one national stage it had earned.

The name comes from the Spanish word for cowboys, a nod to Fort Worth's Western identity. The club was founded in 2013, announced its name in February 2014 and played its first competitive match that May. Its home has moved with the seasons: LaGrave Field, then Farrington Field from 2016 to 2021, and now W.O. Barnes Stadium at Castleberry High School. The stadium seats 4,000 following renovations completed in 2023. The supporters' group, the Panther City Hellfire, follows the team through these moves.

Off the pitch, the academy under Mark Snell has produced players who went on to professional contracts, among them Fidel Barajas, now at Charleston Battery. The club also runs a women's side, Fort Worth Vaqueras, in the Women's Premier Soccer League (WPSL).