Pickering Football Club, commonly known as Pickering FC, is a Canadian semi-professional

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

club based in

Pickering Pickering may refer to: Places Antarctica * Pickering Nunataks, Alexander Island Australia * Pickering, South Australia, the original name (1872–1940) of the town of Wool Bay * Pickering Brook, Western Australia, Australia Canada * Pic ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

. The club was founded in 1984 as a youth soccer club and added its semi-professional club in

League1 Ontario League1 Ontario (L1O) is a semi-professional men's soccer league in Ontario, Canada. The league began play in 2014 and is sanctioned by the Canadian Soccer Association and the Ontario Soccer Association as a pro-am league in the Canadian so ...

in 2014. The team plays home games at Kinsmen Park. The club was one of the ten original founding men's teams in

, which was established in 2014, as well as one of eight original founding women's teams of the

League1 Ontario women's division League1 Ontario (L1O) is a semi-professional women's soccer league in Ontario, Canada. The league is sanctioned by the Canadian Soccer Association and the Ontario Soccer Association as a pro-am league in the Canadian soccer league system. Th ...

which was established in 2015. The semi-professional team was originally known as Durham United FC from 2014 until 2015, and then Durham United FA from 2016 until 2019, when they re-branded as Pickering FC. Also until 2019, their youth OPDL teams were known simply as United FA.

History

In 2014, the semi-professional club was established by Pickering Soccer Club to play in the newly formed

as one of the founding members, with a placeholder name of ''Durham Power FC'', referencing their youth competitive teams which went by the name ''Pickering Power'', whose nickname reference the Pickering Power Plant in the city. However, in an effort to be inclusive of the larger region beyond Pickering, the club was ultimately named Durham United FC. This inclusivity allowed the club to form working relationships with other local clubs - Oshawa Kicks SC and West Rouge SC - to participate in the club, although Oshawa Kicks later formed their own club in 2019. To recognize this partnership, in 2016, the club changed the ''FC'' to ''FA'' to be known as Durham United Football Alliance. Durham United played their first home match against

Internacional de Toronto Internacional de Toronto C.F. was a short-lived Canadian soccer club founded and dissolved in 2014 and based in Toronto, Ontario. The club played in League1 Ontario, part of the third division of the Canadian soccer league system. The club playe ...

at Kinsmen Park in

Pickering, Ontario Pickering (2021 population 99,186) is a city located in Southern Ontario, Canada, immediately east of Toronto in Durham Region. Beginning in the 1770s, the area was settled by primarily ethnic British colonists. An increase in population occurre ...

on June 8, 2014, defeating the visitors 2–0. After playing in the league's first four seasons, the team went on hiatus for the 2018 season, before returning to the league in 2019. For the 2020 season, the club re-branded as Pickering Football Club, matching the name of the youth club, who changed their name from Pickering Soccer Club. They added a women's club to participate in the inaugural

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...

of the

. The women's team won the inaugural 2015 league championship They repeated as champions for the 2018 season. After opting out of the 2021 seasons, it was announced that the club would return to both the male and female divisions, under a new ownership group led by led by principal investors Ritchie Jeune and Chris Rivett, who co-own

USL League Two USL League Two (USL2), formerly the Premier Development League (PDL), is a semi-professional developmental soccer league sponsored by United Soccer Leagues in the United States and Canada, forming part of the United States soccer league syste ...

side

South Bend Lions FC South Bend Lions Football Club is an American soccer club based in South Bend, Indiana, that plays in USL League Two, the American semi-professional soccer league. The club was established on November 18, 2019 and will begin their first professio ...

(Jeune also owns English sixth tier side

Kettering Town F.C. Kettering Town Football Club is a football club based in Burton Latimer, Northamptonshire, England. They are currently members of and play at Latimer Park in Burton Latimer. Kettering were the first club to wear sponsorship on their shirts in ...

and Chinese club Shantou Lions).

Seasons

Men

Women

Notable former players

The following players have either played at the professional or international level, either before or after playing for the League1 Ontario team:

Men

Women

References

External links

* {{Toronto Sports Soccer clubs in Ontario League1 Ontario teams Pickering, Ontario