Who the hell are River Light FC?

If you’re a part of the Chicago soccer community on X/Twitter, you may have wondered that at least once in the last few months. Between posts about already-established lower league sides and the Chicago Fire were various Tweets from some team called River Light FC. They appeared from out of nowhere, and they just kept coming.

Well, if you’ve ever wanted to know more about this mystery side, then you’ve come to the right place.

On Field Focus

The question at the start of this article was the same exact question I asked club sporting director and head coach Charlie Latshaw III.

“So River Light, we're a first-year club, we ‘kicked off’ on October 3rd. Obviously we haven't actually kicked off, we've yet to kick a soccer ball, but we're a new club in USL League 2 and USLW being run by three people that have previously worked in the USL landscape at the pre-professional level,” said Latshaw. “We're a new club based out of Aurora, but I would say that the people involved are not new to the ecosystem of USL.”

Alright there’s that then, the article is over we can go home now.

Kidding, of course.

The interesting thing about River Light is that they’re going straight into the USL system. Most of the newer teams you see popping up start in local leagues, like the Midwest Premier League. That’s not the case here.

“USL League 2 is labeled path-to-pro now. It's fully amateur based, and it's technically on that fourth tier,” said Latshaw. “It’s super competitive. I think, from my experience, that it’s the highest level of amateur play in the country. That’s because it's made up of guys that are either freshly graduated from division one colleges or players on their summer break.”

That’s the exact type of player the club has focused their recruitment on. They’ve also put an emphasis on their own region, like Athletic Club in Bilbao, only going for players in the Chicagoland area. “We weren't ever worried about the talent coming in. Chicagoland has hundreds of players that could play at the level,” said Latshaw.

So, how do you recruit players at this sort of level, in this part of the country? It’s a lot about who you know, and staying in contact.

“It's a lot of networking with college coaches. I've leaned on my previous network with the MLS Next Academy, Chicago Fire Soccer, EPFC United, places like that. Since it's our third year as a staff together, albeit under a new badge, we’ve built up a good reputation amongst players,” said Latshaw. “So it's just a lot of phone calls, a lot of answering emails from players, a lot of communicating with division one coaches and other coaches in the college ecosystem.”

Finding and signing players is tough as is when you’re an established team, but it’s a different ballgame when you’re starting a roster from scratch.

“We started with a list of 400 players of each gender, men's and women, and we kind of whittled our way down. We had a lot of conversations. We probably started the recruiting period slightly earlier than a lot of clubs, around Thanksgiving,” said Latshaw. “On top of that we hosted two rounds of open tryouts where we did identify some local talent that was not on our radar, and we chose to bring them on board as well. It's a little bit of everything. It's definitely networking, it's definitely your past experiences with some players, and then some of it's just luck of the draw in terms of open tryouts.”

One of those players? A certain Noeh Hernández. Those who know the Fire might know him well, as he often features for the club’s MLS Next Pro side. He’s also a Puerto Rican international, he plays for DePaul University, and he’ll soon make his debut for River Light.

“Hernandez, we are excited about, I think he’s big for us,” said Latshaw. “He brings player flexibility, he's a good face for the program within the community. He seems like a great kid and he's eager to come in and showcase himself at this level and see what he can do. And obviously he's coming off of a great freshman season at DePaul and thankfully they were happy to connect us and make sure he came our way.”

The player himself is just as excited.

“Some of the reasons I chose to join River Light was to play with some old teammates again and to get minutes and exposure,” said Hernández. “I can’t wait, it should be fun connecting with them and playing alongside one another like the old times. I feel like I’d be able to further develop my career by seeing the level of what other college players possess and see how they match up with me.”

Hernández will be a part of the large crop of new players to the program, but there are also some familiar faces who have already worked with River Light’s staff elsewhere. Even though there’s been a lot of change, the message and the expectations remain the same.

“There should be no difference. The coaches and I know what our objective is and that’s to win,” said Juan Gutierrez. “They have trusted me with a leadership role, and I know that the confidence and trust is still there from them.”

“It’s a great opportunity to work with Latshaw again. He wants the absolute best out of me and I always want someone who’s going to push me to my best. He’s a great person as well who always takes care of his players,” said Gutierrez.

River Light has put as much of a focus on building up their women’s roster as their men’s. Thankfully that sort of equality is becoming more and more prevalent with lower-level clubs,

“I think that as an emerging market here in America in general, there's tons of opportunities for the female side of the game. For us it's important,” said Latshaw. “Look, we're a female run organization. I preach equality across genders and all types of people. So who would we be just to roll out a men's team when that doesn’t follow suit with what I preach? We were always going to do both teams. It was always we're going to do both because we think that the players from Chicagoland need that service. They need that opportunity.”

Recruiting players and developing a strong roster is one thing, but none of that matters if the results don’t come on the field.

“I think results are important at this level. If you want to attract a fan base beyond the initial games, you have to be successful on the field,” said Latshaw. “I'll say with full transparency, the expectations for us are to compete to make the playoffs in both leagues. On the men's side, we have a squad that should be able to compete for a US Open Cup spot through the regular season, and the full expectation is to go out there and compete for Heartland Division Championships.”

It’s been a long road to get here, and there’s still plenty of time until River Light’s season gets going. However, once it does start up, it might be over before you know it.

“It's a short sprint,” said Latshaw. “We'll start training May 6th and then the regular season's done by July 15th. Essentially we fit 12 regular season games in between the middle of May and the middle of July. On top of that we schedule three to four friendlies just to make sure the player pool is getting what they need out of us. I think that's the great part about Chicagoland is you have Midwest Premier League, you have the UPSL division here that are competitive, and we'd be silly not to play some of those groups just to get meaningful experiences.”

Admin Day

Fans of lower league clubs know all about the “més que un club” (more than a club) mantra that these local organizations live by, and River Light won’t be any different.

They’ll be representing Aurora and Kane County, which is a market that has plenty of potential. There are plenty of soccer fans in the area, and it’s only about 40 miles away from the city of Chicago.

“We've seen that Kane County and a lot of those western suburbs have had a lot of success in the minor league sports industry, in terms of attracting a fan base and getting consistent crowds. It's a new area for us, but the community is behind us and is pretty excited about the project,” said Latshaw. “The city of Aurora itself has been more than eager to help us in our venture by connecting us to people within the community, connecting us to businesses within the community for sponsorship purposes, and then bringing us into their long-term plans in terms of their future sports facilities that they're looking to build down there. So for us, we think it's an ideal marketplace.

Latshaw continues, “The city of Aurora is one of the cities that doesn't have a minor league baseball team or a minor league hockey team, and because they have a very diverse population, they're hungry for competitive soccer. We just want to fill that void and make sure that we're doing something that's meaningful for the community in terms of keeping a family friendly environment that's affordable that allows them to go see the next generation of future professionals that come out of Chicago. What we've seen here for the first four months is that there's more than enough people that are willing to help us with our cause here.”

The area has embraced River Light, and the club has repaid the favor. That is clear to see just by looking at the team’s name and logo, which honors Aurora.

“River comes from the Fox River that runs through the heart of Kane County,” said general manager Heather Bickerton. “Light derives from the City of Aurora which is the ‘City of Lights’ for being the first city in the US with public street lights.”

As like every other logo release that happens in American soccer nowadays, the club also released a graphic that explains its emblem. This one’s not as cringey, though, which is nice. There’s a street light front and center, and underneath the River Light name is six waves, to represent the “individuals who have made this dream a reality” and the Fox River that runs through Kane County.

While River Light will focus on putting their stamp on their home region, the goal is still to grow the club’s popularity across the city. The best way to do that? By having a presence on social media. That’s the only reason I found out about the team, and that’s likely the case for many others.

“As a new organization, brand recognition is key for us and through maintaining our presence digitally we are gearing up to an incredible summer,” said Bickerton. “No matter the level of the club, a year round presence as well as maintaining a professional standard will help us continue to grow and become a club that not only locals can get excited about but gain attention nationwide.”

Running an account that’s as active as theirs isn’t easy. There are graphics that have to be made, write-ups to publish, and keeping things on schedule is key to maximizing interactions. Despite the minimal budget, the club keeps things rolling, and at a high level.

“As long as you’re organized and plan ahead, putting out consistent content is pretty easy. At the moment our general manager does it all, but as we near the season and content will be busier we will have more hands on deck through interns and volunteers,” said Bickerton. “We are currently an amateur program, but our standards are professional.”

Duality is King

Now it’s time to look forward to the year ahead, and the best way to do that is by setting goals for the campaign, both off and on the field.

“I'll start with off the field. I think we would like to pull a crowd. There's clubs in this league that draw 2,000 to 5,000 fans every game, so I think we would be really happy if we can go over that 1,000 person threshold on average,” said Latshaw. “We'd also like to engage with as many of the youth clubs in the metro area as possible, targeting youth clubs within 30 minutes of Kane County looking to get in there and support their programs in any way that we can. And then on top of that, we'd like to work with some charitable organizations for some of our friendlies and give back to those local organizations that do so much for people.”

“On the field, what would be success for us would be making the playoffs on both the men's and the women's side,” said Latshaw. “And even beyond that, once we're in the playoffs, obviously the name of the game is to win as many games as you can once you get there.”

- Adnan Bašić