Kensington Soccer Club will make its U.S. Open Cup debut this weekend, participating with other local Philly teams

The early stages of the U.S. Open Cup generally don’t get much attention, beyond a small niche of fans of the tournament.

But scattered among the 70 teams in this weekend’s first qualifying round are some famed Philadelphia names.

There are the Ukrainian Nationals, still the last local team to win America’s oldest soccer competition, back in 1966, and one of just eight teams to do so at least four times.

Here are United German Hungarians, two-time runners-up, and the home club of the venerated Fricker family. Werner Sr. was the U.S. Soccer Federation’s president from 1984-90, when the U.S. ended a 40-year men’s World Cup drought and won hosting rights for 1994.

How about Vereinigung Erzgebirge, another team founded by German immigrants, which made the round of 16 in 1991? Or West Chester United, which won three rounds of qualifiers last year to reach the full field?

Then there’s Lone Star FC, doing vital service work through soccer in Kingsessing. It’s a magnet for West Philadelphia’s African immigrant community, with famous alumni including former Union and U.S. youth national team midfielder Derrick Jones. The current players also feature for squads in Philadelphia’s Unity Cup.

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All five of those clubs will take the field this weekend, as the 108th Open Cup begins its long road to glory. And they’ll be joined by a debutant from the heart of the inner city.

Kensington Soccer Club, a nonprofit in the eponymous neighborhood, launched in 2010 as an after-school program for kids. The club has grown so much since then that it now has men’s and women’s adult teams.

The men’s squad gained its first invitation to the Open Cup this year and will visit United German Hungarians on Sunday at 7 p.m. Now Kensington, like all the others, can dream of a run in a tournament that features teams from amateurs to the top pros of MLS.

“For me, someone who was born and raised and lived in Philadelphia my whole life, inside of the city — I’ve taught in the city now for over a decade, and coached — it means a lot,” coach Jim Breslin said.

Entering the tournament was simply a matter of applying to U.S. Soccer after having been in an eligible league for long enough, in this case the U.S. Adult Soccer Association’s Eastern Premier Soccer League.

“Kensington Soccer Club, with this men’s program and the women’s program, is providing a vehicle for players that live in the city to find a club to call their home,” Breslin said. “It’s been like that for the youth players of Kensington and inner-city Philadelphia, and now it’s becoming a home for men and women who work in the city, and this is becoming their club.”

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Breslin has no idea what will happen Sunday once the whistle blows, but that’s part of the fun of it.

“As far as being able to compete in it [the Open Cup] at the level that would be required, well, we’re going to find that out,” he said. “It means opportunity for all our players. We have a lot of players that aspire to make the higher levels of the game, and the Open Cup, for me is a vehicle to do that.”

What he does know is that facing UGH specifically will be special, because his brother Brian played for the club in the 1990s.

“I’m back in my old neighborhood, where I grew up, in Parkwood,” Breslin said. “There was a gentleman a little bit older than me, of German descent, that would be out there every day practicing — he was on the United German Hungarians back in the 80s, and he’d be out there at the wall every day practicing soccer. It’s just a deep, deep soccer culture in Philadelphia, it stretches way back, and it’s special to me that the club is still here and thriving.”

Union manager Jim Curtin, who played on UGH’s fields as a kid, wished all of the local teams good luck.

“To have so many teams from the Philly area representing, it’s great for the game,” said Curtin, who has long championed making the Open Cup a big deal for his players and Union fans.

“I have a lot of friends that still play for some of those teams, that are coaching at those teams,” he said. “The grassroots soccer in Philadelphia, I put it up against any city in the country. … That’s the cool thing about the Open Cup: they can run into the Philadelphia Union down the road, and it’s not that far-fetched.”

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Saturday, 10 a.m.: Ukrainian Nationals vs. West Chester United, Ukrainian American Sports Center, North Wales

Sunday, 2 p.m.: Vereinigung Erzgebirge vs. Philadelphia Lone Star FC, Vereinigung Erzgebirge Clubhouse, Warminster

Sunday, 7 p.m.: Kensington SC vs. United German Hungarians, The Proving Grounds, Field 6, Conshohocken

Sunday, 7 p.m.: Real Central New Jersey vs. Jackson Lions FC, Mercer County Community College, West Windsor Township