The 104th edition of the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup will kick off on May 10 with 99 teams from across the country battling for the United States’ true national championship.
After a long hiatus, professional teams re-entered the tournament en masse in 1995, what TheCup.us has declared as the beginning of the Modern Era.
The tournament has come a long way since that 1995 tournament. That year, it was a 16-team competition made up of four A-League teams (Div. 2), seven USISL Pro teams (Div. 3), and five amateur teams (one USISL Premier team, four USASA teams).
The tournament doubled in size to 32 teams in 1997 and after seven years of being in the 30s, the Open Cup reached 40 in 2004. It remained between 40 and 42 teams until 2012 when it shot up to 64. Since, it has either increased or remained the same every year.
The highest number of entries that TheCup.us has been able to dig up was 145 teams that entered in 1970 (although that’s unclear if that is including the tournament proper, or all teams that entered qualifying at the beginning).
Click on the map to the right to see the geographic representation of this year’s tournament on a map created by Gilberto Hernandez (Twitter: @GilbertoHdz200).
There are 30 different states represented (35 different state associations overall) this year. There are also a number of Modern Era participation records that have been broken in 2017.
California – 19 (previous record: 13)
Colorado – 4
Florida: 10
Massachusetts: 4
Oklahoma: 4
Pennsylvania: 6
There is more than one Kentucky team team for the first time in the Modern Era, and there are two teams from Nevada who will take part in the competition, marking the first time that the Silver State has had a team in the Open Cup proper.