(Photo courtesy of Patrick Garber and Loudoun United)
West Chester United can say they had their chances for a Cupset.
Unfortunately, a late goal from Princeton freshman Jackson Martin wasn’t enough to force extra time against Loudoun United, who scored twice in the game’s first twenty minutes then held on to escape a First Round upset in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup First Round Tuesday night at YSC Sports in Wayne, PA.
Loudoun, pro side from the USL Championship, took the game to the hosts in the early minutes, scoring off a great individual run from Marcos Dias, who followed with an assist in the 20th minute to Elvis Amoh to create a comfortable lead. But West Chester never went away, and in fact, grew stronger in the game, eventually pinning the visitors back in their end during a flurry of action in the final twenty minutes that included one shot off the bar and several dynamic saves from keeper Ethan Bandre to preserve the 2-1 win and advance to the Second Round.
West Chester, who successfully defended their EPSA Amateur Cup streak on Friday night with a dramatic 4-3 win over VE, injected some youth into the side to compete for ninety minutes with a Loudon team full of seasoned professionals. Captain Ridge Robinson and mainstays Luca Mellor, Marcus Brenes, and Luke Thomas led a starting XI that included five players from Princeton’s 2025 Ivy League championship team, among them keeper Andrew Samuels and forward Bardia Hormozi, who were drafted by St. Louis SC and Minnesota United respectively in last December’s MLS Entry Draft.
Loudoun entered the game playing with an intense pace after falling 3-2 in their USL opener to the defending champions Pittsburgh Riverhounds over the weekend. New head coach Anthony Limbrick’s players took their frustration out on the hosts with a number of early crunching tackles, but Marcos Dias did the most damage. Receiving a pass on the fly from Amoh in the third minute, Dias rounded defender Amit Bhogul and outpaced Roka Tsunehara and managed to send a toe poke to the far corner that beat keeper Samuels for the 1-0 lead. Samuels, the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year last season, never quite got his positioning after Dias’ quick attack caught the defensive unit off guard in transition.pro
Marcos Dias puts Loudon up 3’ in.
— Backyard Pitches (@BackyardPitches) March 18, 2026
pic.twitter.com/q89ef379L7
West Chester responded a minute later with a free kick from William Beckwith that bounced around the top of the box until Mellor struck a volley that sailed over the bar. Ten minutes later, Loudoun midfielder Sean Young got on the end of a corner and sent a free header off the bottom of the post. Young scored Loudon’s second goal in their opener over the weekend.
West Chester had a golden opportunity to pull level in the 17th minute through their Princeton connection when Tsunehara freed Hormozi down the right side with Martin streaking down the left to get inside of his mark. Hormozi sent a lovely first-time ball across the box, and Martin did everything he could to strike it well, but Bandre closed the angle and blocked Martin’s shot from point-blank range.
Four minutes later, Loudoun turned the game back in their favor through Dias, again a menace down the left side. Young sent a ball from deep within his own half that put Dias one-on-one with the midfielder Brenes. Dias beat Brenes to end line, pulled out Mellor and Samuels, and slipped a pass across to the goalmouth to Amoh, who was wide open and couldn’t miss with the empty goal.
21’ @LoudounUnitedFC adds a second. Elvis Amoh from Marcos Dias.#USOC2026 pic.twitter.com/GwVQohmCty
— Backyard Pitches (@BackyardPitches) March 18, 2026
“I’ve been on both sides of these types of teams,” Loudoun United coach Anthony Limbrick told Backyard Pitches after the game about starting strong against a team playing with something prove, “so they’re really tough games and we don’t underestimate them at all. Once we got the first goal, it was good, but I think at two-nil we needed to get that third, and that was disappointing for us.”
Six minutes from the break, West Chester had another great chance to pull a goal back. Martin, who was a handful all night for the Loudoun defenders, dribbled through the Loudoun midfield line and found Robinson curling away from the central defender Bolu Akinyode. Robinson let the ball roll across his body and sent a left-footed shot at Bandre, who stacked the pads and stopped another opportunity for the hosts.
Mellor had a bouncing sitter at the penalty spot in stoppage time, but he scuffed his shot, and West Chester went into halftime down two goals despite deserving at least one.
“We should have had three goals in the first half,” West Chester coach Blaise Santangelo told Backyard Pitches after the game. “They scored their two opportunities, and we hit the ball right at the goalie. You just can’t do that against a pro team.”
West Chester came out of the break looking to press the visitors, and Hormozi nearly got the goal to change the game’s momentum in the 54th minute when he dribbled inside from the left past Akinyode from and curled a right-footed shot that missed the far post by inches.
With thirty minutes to go, traffic appeared to be going one way as West Chester continued to push the pace of the game, while Loudoun sat back on the counter, preserving their energy. Eventually, signs of the solid Loudon defensive organization and grit began to crack. In the 73rd minute, Hormozi combined with Beckwith on an overlap from the outside left to the inside and unleashed a blast from distance that smashed the underside of the bar and off the goal line before bouncing out. Though video review shows plenty of rubber pellets flying up from the turf, even a close-up screen grab fails to show evidence of the ball bouncing behind the line, but with no VAR it becomes difficult to know for sure if the ball crossed the line.
In the 84th minute, West Chester’s relentlessness finally paid off. Hormozi sent a srceamer on target that Bandre mishandled. Robinson, with a presence around the goal all game, got to the rebound first and touched it off Bandre. Martin pounced on the second rebound and found the back of the net to close the gap to 2-1.
West Chester carried the late-game action and created several more chances off combinations and free kicks, but Loudoun did enough to win the game and eliminate West Chester for the second year in a row.
“In the second half, we outplayed them,” Santangelo said. “We end up going the last twenty minutes three in the back, and we were all over them.” He credited his team for the way they continued to play hard at the end and said shifting Hormozi from the flank to the ten appeared to unlock his team’s presence on the ball.
Loudoun will rebound quickly with a home game Saturday afternoon against Miami FC at Segra Field. As a new coach with a mostly new set of players, Limbrick says he was proud of his team’s performance as they’ve faced two strong early season tests while gathering their rhythm.
“That was positive there,” Limbrick said about his team’s ability to withstand West Chester’s pressure late. “It’s not through a lack of trying that we didn’t get the result last week, and it was a tight game tonight. So there’s plenty of things we can work on, but there’s some good points in that to see the game out in the end.”
Limbrick singled out strong performances from several players, among them midfielder James Murphy, who grew up in Scotch Plains, NJ, and played at youth club PDA before embarking on a pro career that began at Sheffield Wednesday before stints with LAFC, Monterey Bay, Detroit City, and eventually Indy Eleven, where he started and played ninety minutes against the Philadelphia Union in last year’s Open Cup Round of 32 loss. Elvis Amoh scored the goal that tied the game at 1-1, and the Union eventually won 5-4 on penalties.
Santangelo and West Chester will be disappointed with the result but also hope to use the experience to springboard their play forward like it did in last season’s run through the amateur championship and NPSL playoffs, which also earned the club a qualifying spot in this year’s Open Cup.
“It’s a national stage. It’s prominent for our crest, and as the defending amateur champs to be out here playing a pro team,” he said, “it’s really special. But we have a lot to play for, a lot of big games coming up.”
West Chester will begin regional amateur play this weekend in addition to juggling the restarts to both USLPA and APSL league action.
Lineups
West Chester:
A. Samuels, R. Tsunehara (A. Axtman 61’), L. Mellor, A. Bhogal (M. Miller 80’), L. Thomas, M. Brenes, L. Beckwith, B. Hormozi, J. Martin, O. Slack (T. Amspacher 61’), R. Robinson
Unused Subs: T. Kneis, T. Ascoli, S. Tima, L. Hill, J. Weaver
Loudoun United:
E. Bandre, K. Adnan, B. Akinyode, S. Mazzaferro (K. Awuah 27’), L. Piras, J. Murphy, S. Young, G. Robinson (P. Santos 69’), J. Panayotou (T. Úlfarsson 81’), M. Dias (A. Ordóñez 45’), E. Amoh
Unused Subs: L. Herrera-Rauda
