Open Cup Evangelist Peter Wilt Goes Home Again with Chicago House

No one loves the Open Cup like Peter Wilt.

“It’s the greatest soccer tournament in the country – maybe in the world,” said the long-time executive and American grassroots soccer impresario. “Crazy stuff always happens. The lights go out. There’s weather. Someone unexpected does something unexpected. You name it.”

Wilt led the then-brand new Chicago Fire to four Open Cup titles between 1998 and 2006. He’s now running a club at the polar opposite end of the spectrum: Windy City amateurs Chicago House AC.

Catching Fire Early in MLS

Wilt was the Fire’s first president and general manager and helped breathe life into the club with a sensational MLS and Open Cup double in the club’s inaugural year of 1998. Ask the 64-year-old which memory sticks out most from the tournament and he’ll hesitate. But not for long.

• READ: How Chicago House Pulled off a Huge 2023 Cupset

“There’s about a dozen,” he said, before landing on the one – still loaded with emotion nearly two decades down the road. The year was 2006 and he’d just been fired as the Fire’s president and GM after bringing five titles to the club. He was behind the goal with Section 8, the super-fans who protested his dismissal, at Toyota Park in Bridgeview – a stadium whose construction and opening Wilt orchestrated.

The Fire, who Wilt still supports, had just won a fourth Open Cup crown in the space of eight years. After the award presentation, goalkeeper Matt Pickens, who Wilt had signed along with all the players out celebrating on the night, took his winner’s medal off and hung it around his old boss’ neck.

“I just burst out balling,” Wilt remembered of that moment, captured for the ages by a photographer from the Chicago Tribune (and displayed at the top of this article) – the very newspaper whose sports page a young Wilt used to learn how to read at the kitchen table while growing up in the city’s western suburbs. “I was just there balling my eyes out and surrounded by the fans.

“It was the high-point of my connection to the Chicago Fire,” added Wilt, who’s gone on to become a proud spokesman for the lower tiers of the U.S. Soccer pyramid. “It was so special because it was from a player who was showing appreciation for what I’d done there.”

Many Open Cup Moments to Savor

There are other moments. Too many to count. A collection of glorious and cherished frames, frozen in time, for one of American soccer’s great and colorful builders.

Hometown hero (and current Fire head coach) Frank Klopas’ dramatic golden-goal in extra-time of the 1998 Open Cup Final stands out. “How he jumped over the advertising boards,” Wilt remembered, the broadcast call of that night still echoing in his ears: The Fire Does the double. “Remarkable.”

And there’s the 2003 decider at Giants Stadium against former Fire coach Bob Bradley. That was a team that Wilt had to “rebuild from scratch” after busting the salary cap and jettisoning some of the biggest names in MLS at the time. Josh Wolff, Hristo Stoichkov and Peter Nowak were among them.

But it’s not just the medals and trophy-lifts. It’s the bottom to the top, and all the unique Open Cup spaces in between, that captured Wilt’s heart. He’s a vocal advocate of an open system for American soccer, so it makes sense.

“The Open Cup, if you think about it, exposes the opportunity and the beauty and the potential of having an open system where merit wins out,” said Wilt, whose newest experiment, Chicago House AC, had to claw and scrape through the doldrums of the Covid Years before coming to fruition.

Same Chicago, New Frontier for Wilt

Founded in 2020, House had to pull back from an initial launch as a third-division professional team in NISA (a league Wilt also helped launch with hopes of a more open system, complete with promotion and relegation). There were a series of unforeseeable incidents and obstacles.

Now playing in the amateur Midwest Premier League, and with an all-volunteer staff (himself included as CEO and president), there are more mountains to climb than expansive views to savor for House. But the prolific Wilt doesn’t start a club without a purpose in mind.

“In a city like Chicago we should have a dozen pro soccer teams, all with their own identities,” he said from his current home in Milwaukee not far from the Highbury Pub, where you can find him for a beer and a chat with a game blinking away on a screen behind the bar. “And we, as a club, have a platform to help promote progressive ideals.”

The club’s name is a nod to the city’s rich history of nonprofits, like Jane Addams Hull-House and Chicago House (and Social Service Agency), the city’s early LGBTQ support organization and a frontrunner in AIDS outreach.

The name is also a nod to the electronic house music scene born in the city in the early 1980s.

Chicago House Hog Cup Spotlight

“We spent more money than we had,” Wilt said with a rueful half-smile when asked what went wrong – why Chicago House had to downshift into the amateur world with a skeleton crew of unpaid die-hards keeping the lights on. “Of course there was the virus [Covid-19] and it reduced our opportunities to attract fans, sell tickets and sponsorships during our launch.”

But he’s still confident this step back is only temporary. And his House reaching the Tournament Proper via the Qualifying Rounds for the last two years is getting the club’s name out there in a major way.

“Every road deep into the tournament might be a conflict of some kind for me,” laughed the prolific club-builder, a founder and first president/GM of USL Championship side Indy Eleven – who reached the rare air of a Semifinal in the 2024 Open Cup.

The beauty of the Open Cup, and the reason Wilt holds it so close to his heart, is that it’s built on a foundation of possibilities. On Why Nots instead of No Ways. And that’s what makes this current project so special for him – and for fans of the underdog everywhere.

A New Road (Bumps and All)

For a man who’s won the biggest prizes in American soccer (Wilt has an MLS Cup ring from 1998 to go with his Open Cups) he’s still happy to be out in the cold, scarf wrapped around his neck pushing a new club – a new alternative – into the conversation.

“A club needs to fill a need in the community,” Wilt responded when asked why he’s still out there starting up soccer clubs. “I need to see an opportunity or a pathway to success.”

And he sees no reason his players, taking aim at a third straight berth in the Open Cup, shouldn’t believe either. Success, depending on who you are and where you are, can be defined a hundred different ways. And Wilt has always preferred his own road.

“The Open Cup Proper is a tremendous boost to the players, to the fanbase of the team and for all it represents.” said Wilt, ahead of another tilt at the tricky windmills of Open Cup Qualifying.

“I’m the CEO and president,” he laughed. “But I’m still the guy who picks up the pizzas too.”

Top photo courtesy of Nuccio DiNuzzo and the Chicago Tribune.

Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.