Starting in 2025, Pittsburgh will be home to a new pre-professional soccer team: Pittsburgh Riveters SC. It was announced in April 2024 that the Riverhounds ownership group was in the process of putting a team together and holding a team naming contest. The Riveters moniker emerged the city’s clear favorite.
Over the years, the soccer scene in Pittsburgh has grown immensely. The Pittsburgh Riverhounds started out playing in various high school venues before moving to their current home at Highmark Stadium, which can currently seat 5,000 people.
During their first nine out of 10 years playing in Station Square, there was an average of 2,991 fans that attended the home games.
In 2023, the Riverhounds blew that average out of the window, drawing 5,073 spectators per game. They had three games that year alone that ended up drawing 6,000+ people each. 2024 was no small feat either, drawing 5,050 people per game.
Dan Visser, sporting director for the Riverhounds, explains the reasons behind adding a women’s club in the area.
“I think there’s absolutely a business case for it. If there was not a business case for it, we would not being doing it,” he says.
Visser added that there will be six additional home dates that they will be able to sell tickets, providing the opportunity for additional sponsorship.
In addition, he explains that this announcement provides another pathway for women, specifically the ones who are in the Riverhounds Academy.
“We have a lot of girls who are very successful at the youth level, whether that’s U.S. youth national teams, whether that’s awards within the ECL or awards within their high school,” he says.
Recently, the team announced that they obtained their first commitment for the club in Tessa Dellarose, who currently is attending North Carolina and is a standout member of the soccer team as a defender.
“In terms of specific profiles, I think we are going after the studs,” he says.
“You bring a Tessa Dellarose on, who has checked every box in terms of everything … certainly checks every box in terms of her on the field play, her work rate, and her attitude,” he says.
“For her to be dominating fitness tests at the University of North Carolina is no small feat. She’s [also] hyper invested in the city of Pittsburgh,” he says.
Visser says the organization has undertaken a continual process of team building.
“We’re having conversations with other girls as well…We can be highly selective and are still pretty early in the process,” he says.
With a new squad comes a new coach. Last month, the Riverhounds brass announced that Scott Gibson would become the inaugural head coach for the Riveters.
Gibson, an England native, played college soccer at Duquesne University and was a member of the Riverhounds as a player from 2008-2009. Recently, he has spent significant time in the Riverhounds Academy serving as director working with up and coming female soccer players.
“I have had a good touch print on the female side for the last ten years or so,” he says. “I think it was a natural step for me, knowing the marketplace and having worked with many female athletes. It’s always been the goal of the Riverhounds organization to field a women’s team too,” he says.
After meeting with Visser, the Riverhounds offered him the role.
“They came to me with an offer and I says it was just too good to turn down,” he says.
While he will have the responsibilities of being a head coach, Gibson will still be working in the Academy. He talked about the overall excitement of a new team sharing the same space.
“It’s been exciting. I mean, Tessa [Dellarose] was in the Riverhounds Academy herself. I coached Tessa as well as many of our staff when she was probably 14 years-old. She is the type of person we want to build this around,” he says.
While optimistic about what lies ahead, Gibson knows that there is work to be done in the present. He says that there is a massive “responsibility” to get this done properly.
“There has been a big buzz from this and that has certainly been rewarding,” he says.
“We’re in year one, so there’ll be ups and downs, but I’ll put everything into it and our staff will put everything into it to make it an amazing experience for the players because they are the most important piece of this,” he says.
Overall, Visser says that fans of the Riverhounds have a lot to look forward to with the introduction of the Riveters.
“I think they ought to look forward to success on the field. Beyond that, we’ve got a very large academy now with 1,100 players and half of which are girls,” he says. “There is a huge academy connection, having our academy director [Scott] as the head coach. It’s super exciting for not just the fans, but also the young girls in our community.”
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2024.
