Chicago House AC and Edgewater Castle FC will represent the Midwest Premier League (MWPL) in the 2025 US Open Cup qualifying rounds, as announced by US Soccer today. The two Heartland Conference clubs are among the record-high 114 non-professional teams set to compete for one of the 14 spots in the tournament proper.
This is familiar territory for Chicago House AC, who have qualified for the past two years and made headlines with their 2023 Open Cup run. Chicago House stunned USL League One’s Forward Madison in the second round of the tournament that year, after defeating Bavarian United in the first, and went on to face professional teams like Chicago Fire (MLS). Last year, in the 2024 US Open Cup, they faced professional side Minnesota United 2 (MLS Next Pro).
“Chicago House is proud to enter the US Open Cup qualifying rounds for the third straight year. We are proud that we advanced to the tournament proper each of the two previous years and in 2023, along with Tulsa Athletic, we advanced further than any other amateur club in the country,” said Peter J. Wilt, Chicago House’s Managing Partner. “Under new Head Coach Shannon Seymour, we will work hard to represent Chicago well in this historic tournament.” Wilt has four US Open Cup championship rings from his days running the Chicago Fire. The Fire won the US Open Cup in 1998, 2000, 2003, and 2006.
Heartland Conference Division 2 club Edgewater Castle FC will participate in the US Open Cup qualifying rounds for a second time in a row in 2025. Last year, Edgewater Castle FC earned a 2-1 victory over fellow MWPL club Berber City FC in the first round but were later knocked out by Chicago House AC in the second qualifying round, falling 3-1. Edgewater Castle will look to build on that experience and aim for a deeper run this time around, with the hope of qualifying for the tournament for the first time in club’s history.
“We aim to create a strong team culture during this short autumn cycle, and build around a core group with some fresh faces. Ultimately, we obviously want to win as many games as possible – but we also want to enjoy the process and establish a good vibe with a reworked group of players.” commented Andrew B. Swanson, General Manager and President of Edgewater Castle FC. Swanson went on to reflect on the importance of this competition in the U.S. Soccer landscape. ““In general, the lower-league and semi-pro landscape in the United States is – to put it gently – complicated. From the outside looking in, it’s incredibly difficult to understand where one league stacks up against, above or beneath another, and the ability for clubs to participate in truly open competition is challenging to come across in this ecosystem. That’s why the US Open Cup is so important. It has a clear format, it has a simple narrative, and (until very recently) it provides an opportunity for any club or any team, regardless of their level of play, to win their way to a matchup against a professional club, or even an MLS side. This is what the game represents to lower league clubs in other parts of the world – an immensely difficult, but possible pathway to achieve something spectacular. That’s why we now enter the US Open Cup Qualifiers every Fall – we want to be in an ecosystem where that sense of hope and challenge actually exists.”