
Ocean State club took USL Championship by storm in 2024, becoming first-ever expansion club to win Eastern Conference trophy
Since the USL Championship gained Division II status in 2017, 21 different clubs have joined the ranks of the U.S. Soccer Federation’s second division of men’s professional soccer, but no first-year team has gone as far as Rhode Island FC did in 2024.
Less than half of the league’s expansion clubs in that time had qualified for the playoffs in their first season, and just three advanced as far as the conference semifinal round. The Ocean State club’s run to the USL Championship Final wasn’t just historic – it marked the first time an Eastern Conference club had ever lifted a conference trophy in its first year.
Although RIFC sat in as low as 11th place at one point, Khano Smith’s squad was flying under the radar, powered by one simple fact: they were extremely difficult to beat. While the club managed one win and eight draws through its first 12 matches, it only lost three times. That gave fans the first taste of RIFC’s Never Say Die attitude, and set the stage for an unprecedented run in the second half of the year that propelled the Ocean State club to one of the most successful inaugural seasons in USL Championship history.
RIFC’s relentless resilience continued into the second half of the season, where its seven losses marked the third-fewest in the league. Excluding the COVID-shortened 2020 season, the mark also tied the record for fewest losses by a first-year USL Championship team in the Division II era.
Fast forward to October, an 8-1 rout of Miami FC on the final day of the regular season showcased the strengths of a red-hot Ocean State attack that scored 56 regular-season goals in 2024 – the third-most in the league, and the fourth-most of any expansion team in USL Championship history.
The statement win, which was the largest margin of victory of any USL Championship match all season and the largest win in club history, secured a fifth-place finish in the Eastern Conference: the highest regular-season finish for a first-year club since Reno 1868 FC and the Tampa Bay Rowdies joined the USL Championship in 2017. Despite a slow start to the season, RIFC averaged 1.5 points per match across its 34-match regular season slate and finished with 51 points, both of which were the third-highest totals of any expansion team in league history and most since 2017.
The late-season momentum was spurred by an eight-match mid-summer unbeaten run that saw RIFC score an astonishing 22 goals – an average of just under three per match – while allowing 12. The most notable stop in that stretch was a dominant 5-2 road win over Players’ Shield winners Louisville City FC, which marked the only loss of the regular season for LouCity. The five goals scored was also the first time Louisville had conceded five times in a home match in its USL Championship history.
Through the final 21 regular season matches, RIFC climbed the league’s goal scoring leaderboard and only lost three times.
That momentum didn’t stop at the playoffs. In the midst of a club-record, nine-match unbeaten run that took the club all the way to the USL Championship Final in Colorado Springs, RIFC added another eight combined goals with major postseason road wins at Indy Eleven, Louisville City and Charleston Battery.
The return to Louisville followed by a second trip to Charleston in three weeks for the Eastern Conference Championship pinned RIFC up against two teams that had only suffered a single loss each at home through the entire season. Dubbed the “Rhode Warriors” for their impressive road playoff performances, Smith’s squad lifted the hardware in Charleston after winning both matches in convincing fashion, taking down two perennial powerhouses and conquering what initially looked like a daunting path to a first-ever trophy.
Although the bid for a championship trophy fell short in Colorado Springs in the club’s fourth-straight week on the road, no other expansion side in the Division II era of the USL Championship can say they had the chance to play all the way to the end. In a league full of history and storied franchises, the nation’s smallest state proved they could throw punches with the league’s biggest teams in year one.
With a new, state-of-the-art stadium on the way, new signings and a strong core of players returning for 2025, the future is incredibly bright for the Ocean State club.