How Rhode Island defied numbers to make USL Championship against a Colorado Springs side built for this

On Saturday, history will be made at Widner Field as Rhode Island FC travel to face the Colorado Springs Switchbacks at noon on CBS for the USL Championship. Both are among the hottest teams in the league, searching for the first championship in club history with first-time head coaches, but the similarities begin to divert there. Colorado have been in the USL for 10 years but this is not only their first appearance in the final — after qualifying for the playoffs in their first two seasons, the Switchbacks have been in and out of the postseason. After head coach Brenden Burke left for the Houston Dynamo, the Switchbacks turned to assistant James Chambers to lead the side, deepening their connection toe eastern Pennsylvania of all places.

Chambers and team captain Matt Mahoney played together for Bethlehem Steel where Chambers served as a veteran presence and team captain to help bring along talented players in the Philadelphia Union academy. 

“I think as you get older you get more experience, you’ve seen certain things, you’ve felt different things and I was able to do that in Bethlehem,” Chambers said. “Ultimately, it was slightly easier because I had younger players in a top-class academy that were around me and that bought into what I was trying to do. Whether it was right or wrong, they were still listening to me which was impressive from their side of things. I’d say it helped most definitely but I wouldn’t say it’s completely and utterly molded me into this culture right now, but it has helped along this journey.”

It’s a different world being alongside players such as Brenden Aaronson and Mark McKenzie in Bethlehem but being able to get that experience and at times make mistakes is something that’s critical to growth. Those Bethlehem sides were competitive ones mixing development with performance which has carried over to Colorado Springs. Their midseason improvement has come from the team being more aggressive and learning their roles under Chambers to earn their spot behind strong home form and his players playing for each other.

“I was very fortunate to have Chambo who had played pro at that time and I think he was my age that I am now,” Switchbacks captain Matt Mahoney, 29, said. “When he was captain of that team, my first year, it was incredible to learn from [him] and obviously my relationship with [sporting director Stephen Hogan] and Brenden [Burke] at the time, they made me feel very comfortable and it was all about hard work and mentality. We had a couple of other college guys in that group that made it easy to train and work hard within that organization so I was able to learn how to be a good pro and what it means to win at this level.”

The experience in Bethlehem has gone a long way for Mahoney who has never missed the USL playoffs during his career. The final will lean on that experience which was forged in Bethlehem but that doesn’t mean that an upstart side won’t try and steal the limeght.

Already knocking off Louisville City FC and the Charleston Battery, Khano Smith’s Rhode Island FC have quickly become a team that no one wants to face. Never out of a match, they set the record for most draws in a USL Championship season with 15 and only the class of the league in Louisville and Charleston had fewer losses than Rhode Island’s seven. Coming out of the gate strong in their first season, they became the first expansion side to even make the playoffs since Swope Park Rangers in 2016. Swope Park also advanced to the USL final becoming the second team in USL history to do so but now Rhode Island are the third.

“The turning point in the year is, I guess, when we started winning games. But again, if you look at results and you look at games and if you actually watch the games that we were in, the only game that we weren’t really competitive, from a scoreline perspective, was the Tampa game and that was the Tampa game away,” Smith said reflecting on the season. “It was the third game of the season. We actually went in the half, went up 1-0, and probably should have been up two. I thought, in my opinion, we were the better team. In the second half, they blitzed us like crazy with four goals and we never reacted, we never changed.

“It was a learning moment for me and a learning moment for the players. But other than that, every game has been close, we’ve been competitive, uh, maybe been competitive in all of them, and looking, [it] just took us time to win games, but we also weren’t losing games and, you know, ultimately people like to point out to me and to us that we set the draw record 15 draws. But for me that’s that’s a positive.”

That momentum sparked Rhode Island to buck the trend of expansion teams struggling in their first year but there’s still another challenge in their path. None have stopped them so far though, so they’ll be well prepared to make this a thrilling final and make history in the process as two teams battle for their first crown.

Viewing information

• Date: Saturday, November 23 | Time: 12 p.m. ET
• Location: Weidner Field — Colorado Springs, Colorado
• TV: CBS
• Live stream: Paramount+