Since 1914, the US Open Cup has been a fan favorite for soccer fans at every level in the United States. One site has been a major source of coverage for many fans since 2003. That site is the one and only thecup.us. With the tournament just around the corner, I had the chance to talk to thecup.us Senior Editor Josh Hakala about the tournament, the awesome work they do, and their newest merchandise available.

How did thecup.us get started?

This article tells about the background of the site.

What all does the site do?

The goal of the site is to give the tournament the full coverage that it deserves from the first round of qualifying to the US Open Cup Final. One of the biggest goals of the site has always been to educate people on the rich history of the tournament, so we've spent countless hours digging through newspaper and magazine archives, interviewing former players and coaches in an effort to put together a complete history of this tournament so that future generations can look back at how this country's soccer culture began and how it has evolved. The goal has always been, and we've been pushing for this more in the last year or so, to provide more ways for people to learn about the tournament and its history. I'm hoping to re-launch the radio show that got this site started and do more with social media and I'm hoping I can find some people to help create some special features with our website and possibly create a mobile app down the road. We have so many great ideas of how to grow our coverage, so we launched a Patreon account to fund it.

What do you do in the offseason?

In recent years, we've seen the qualifying tournament for next year's tournament begin before the current tournament is over. In our early days, state qualifying for the following year would often begin within a month or so of them crowning a champion. So we don't really have an offseason, and our amount of downtime in the fall and early spring keeps getting reduced as the tournament, and its qualifying tournament, expands.

But during the, we'll call it the "less busy" time, I use it to catch up, and to work on features, historical research and recruiting help with the site. I do so much of my statistics and historical research manually, so much of the offseason is spent catching up on the previous tournament's results and updating my numerous spreadsheets. The hope is to some day create a database for all of the info in these spreadsheets. Under normal circumstances, my plan is usually to spend the "offseason" catching up on historical research and feature stories. I've got dozens of stories on the back-burner, but I just don't have the bandwidth. In a perfect world, I would find someone, or ideally, a team of people, to handle the site and its coverage of the current tournament, so that I can focus on historical research, feature stories and getting the radio show back up and running again. I've worked in broadcasting for 20 years and would love to create more US Open Cup multimedia for fans to enjoy and to learn from.

Tell me about those super cool shirts.

As I mentioned before, between part-time jobs, freelance broadcasting work, and being a husband and a father of three, I don't have a lot of free time. One of the projects that kept getting pushed to the back-burner was to create some revenue streams for the site. We don't aim to get rich doing this, but if we can at least get paid for our time, and have the ability to pay freelancers to help us to improve our coverage of the tournament, then it can make a big impact. So I had always wanted to create some shirts that we can sell to raise some money. In recent years, I noticed that during the NCAA college basketball tournaments, teams have these themed shirts. I thought, what "theme" could we come up with that exists across all the teams and fans in the competition? We've been using the "We Want The Cup" hashtag for a while now and I thought since we've adopted that as our site's tag line, and thought it would be a perfect way to do it. Since we don't have the rights to put team logos on a shirt, we thought, why not take the approach of the college basketball teams and have a similar themed shirt and we would make them available in every team's color scheme. Because every team "wants the cup". It seemed like a perfect rallying cry for every team in the competition. We've had a lot of really great feedback from them so far and I have to give a shout out to Zac Freeland (Twitter/IG: @ZacFreeland) for designing the shirt.

And my personal favorite is the "national champions" shirt in the style of the "John, Paul, George and Ringo" Beatles shirts, only with ours, we are featuring the five pre-MLS teams that won four or more US Open Cup titles: Steelmen (Bethlehem Steel), Marksmen (Fall River Marksmen), Ukrainians (Ukrainian Nationals), Greeks (New York Greek Americans), and Maccabees (Maccabee AC). Much like the Beatles shirt, if you see someone with that shirt, and know your soccer history, you'll get the reference. It's also a good opportunity to give someone a brief history lesson about how soccer has been around for more than a century in this country. A little soccer evangelism opportunity.

What are you looking forward to most in the USOC this year?

Every year, since I don't have a rooting interest, I just root for the tournament to be dramatic and compelling. Another thing I'm looking forward to is seeing the tournament grow using their digital streaming partner, ESPN+. I think putting every game on ESPN+ last year was a huge boost to the US Open Cup and I'm looking forward to watching games from Round 1 to the Final on my TV and on a variety of devices.

What lower league (USL L2/NISA or below) do you think will make the biggest splash?

With the new schedule change, I have a feeling we're not going to see as many upsets from USL League Two and NPSL teams. I would love to be proven wrong. Although, it's impossible to know because we've never seen teams from those leagues try to operate in the US Open Cup without the use of college players. So I'm curious to see, most of all, what those rosters even look like.

What first round matchup intrigues you the most?

I know they're probably not happy about playing each other again, because they've played a lot recently in league and cup play, but VE and West Chester United will be an interesting Philly-area matchup. They know each other really well, so that should be a fun rivalry game. The Pancyprian Freedoms against FC Motown will be interesting as well. Out west, the matchup that looks the most interesting is Ventura County Fusion, who has been one of the top USL League Two teams over the years, against Cal FC, who always brings a lot of young talent to the US Open Cup.

What can people do to support what you guys do at thecup.us?

The best way to support the site is to join our Patreon team (www.patreon.com/usopencup). If we can continue to add to our Patreon team, we'll be able to meet so many of the goals we have to expand our coverage of the tournament. That includes a site redesign, create a mobile app, a March Madness-style bracket contest, create a studio show to recap the tournament or other video features, and to re-launch a US Open Cup podcast. Anyone who is familiar with the National Public Radio funding model knows that if enough supporters each contribute a small amount, then you can make a big difference. Patreon is an ideal way to provide long-term support for the site, but fans can also purchase one of our "We Want The Cup" shirts. If a financial contribution is not in the cards, then sharing our fundraising efforts with your circle of soccer friends is always helpful. We're also always looking for people to help out with the site if you are a writer, editor, have skills in audio and video editing, graphic design, or website design, then I encourage people to reach out to the site.

- Aarik Long