Plus everything you need to know before Saturday’s home opener at Covenant Health Park
Since its establishment in early 2021, One Knoxville SC, the city’s first professional soccer franchise, has experienced tremendous growth. Playing its inaugural 2022 season in League Two, the semi-pro division of the United Soccer League (USL), the largest organization for the sport in the country, One Knox, having met the criteria for advancement, quickly made the jump to League One prior to the 2023 campaign. Now, with the 2025 season already well underway, the club is undefeated in league play, situated near the top of the table and just claimed the top spot in the latest official power rankings.
Though it was knocked out of the single-elimination Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup* in a narrow loss on April 16 to a team in the Championship, the top tier of the USL, One Knox is 3-0-1 in League One. Having drawn its first match in Spokane, Washington, on March 16, the team won its next three games, in Sherman, Texas, Greenville, South Carolina, and Naples, Florida, respectively.
That latest match, which ended 1-0, might be the most impressive result of the young season. Also undefeated and sitting atop the standings prior to the encounter, FC Naples was bossed by the away side in the first half. Out-possessing and outshooting the Florida club and converting a deserved penalty kick just before the break, One Knox held on for the shutout in what turned into a back-and-forth affair in the second frame. The victory left the team with 10 points (3 points are awarded for a win, 1 for a draw) and tied for third place – although it has played three fewer matches than both Naples and the squad with which it is even on points, and two fewer games than the club in second.
Left-footed striker Kempes Tekiela, whose name is pronounced the same as the agave-based spirit, was the scorer of the deciding goal on the Gulf Coast, and he is among nine returning players from last year’s squad. The 21-man roster still includes the club’s first-ever signing, James Thomas, who captained the side during its foundational season, as well as current captain Jordan Skelton, who joined before the 2023 campaign. Stavros Zarokostas came in at the end of last season and is key to leading the right side of the forward line along with Tekiela in the center and newcomer Mark Doyle taking up position on the left. The midfield, largely retooled for 2025 save for holdouts Callum Johnson and Sivert Haugli, features a healthy mix of experienced veterans and talented youngsters. Sean Lewis returns as the team’s primary netminder.
While Tekiela was the leading goalscorer in all competitions last year, Doyle is off to a hot start and may challenge him in that department. The German striker and Irish winger each have netted two goals, though the latter was brought in specifically by new manager Ian Fuller to provide speed and clinical finishing ability on the counter. As a unit, they will hope to better the team’s total from last season; although One Knox secured a playoff berth in 2024, it tallied the fewest goals in the league.
Having spent the previous eight seasons as an assistant coach with Minnesota United of Major League Soccer, the gaffer, who recently earned League One Coach of the Week honors, favors a formation that usually features four at the back, a holding midfielder and a rotating configuration of attacking players. (Fuller employed a 4-1-4-1 against FC Naples and a 4-3-2-1 against Greenville Triumph SC, with Abel Caputo playing a deeper role in a midfield three versus the South Carolina club.) His assistant, Ilija Ilić, is a familiar face to Knoxville soccer fans; in addition to being the franchise’s first professional signing ahead of the 2023 campaign, he served as interim manager when Mark McKeever was dismissed in the middle of last season.
Before it began playing all of its home matches at Regal Stadium, home of the University of Tennessee’s women’s soccer team, in 2023, One Knox spent the previous year bouncing between various regional venues that included Maryville College and Austin-East and Catholic high schools. Though Regal’s soccer-specific confines offered a pleasant fan experience and a world-class natural playing surface, something about the arrangement just seemed off, at least from my perspective. So while the team will share Covenant Health Park with the Knoxville Smokies, the Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, the brand-new multi-use stadium near the city center feels like a more intuitive fit.
Perhaps it is the fact that the facility, fully enclosed and intimate with a capacity for slightly more than 6,300 people, is as ideally suited for soccer as it is for minor league baseball. Or maybe it is the investment, at significant cost, in a retractable pitcher’s mound that makes the partnership between Boyd Sports, LLC., the City of Knoxville and One Knoxville SC seem more tenable and amenable to all parties. Either way, having attended half of the games in the first Smokies homestand, I am eagerly awaiting One Knox’s home opener on April 26 – both to luxuriate in what promises to be a festive footballing environment and to see how Covenant Health Park is transformed to accommodate the beautiful game.
To that end, the conversion, spearheaded by Visit Knoxville and local landscaping/construction firm Earthadelic, is a 12-hour process that requires 15,000 square feet of sod to cover the dirt around the infield, warning track and mound. A 10-person crew is responsible for the work, which is done immediately after the last game of a home series to ensure that the transitions between the permanent turf and temporary sod are seamless and free of impediment. During a tour of the stadium a few weeks ago, I asked the Smokies representative guiding us if the protective netting extending from the backstop to either side of foul territory would be lowered during soccer matches. She didn’t have a definitive answer at the time, but I will update this article with that information after Saturday’s game. (Update: The netting will remain in place for the entirety of the baseball season but could be removed before the end of the soccer season.)
With the opener being the first USL Jägermeister Cup** match of the year, One Knox welcomes Championship side FC Tulsa to town for the inaugural soccer game at Covenant Health Park. Hoping to give the squad a competitive advantage and set a league attendance record in the process, the club’s social media accounts have been pressing hard for a sellout in the weeks leading up to the match. The push has been successful, moving 5,500 tickets so far, and the organization will be hosting a block party in the Old City before the game with the aim of generating even more buzz ahead of the teams taking the pitch.
Central Street will be closed to traffic in order for Volkswagen Village to open at 3 p.m. Local indie-rock band Tinca Tinca will soundtrack the event, which will feature player appearances and food from neighborhood tenant Red Panda Grocery. Townsend’s Company Distilling will be on-site for whiskey tastings, and Maryville brewery Peaceful Side, crafter of the team’s official light lager, will provide the beer. The Scruffs, a chapter of hardcore fans devoted to One Knox, will begin their march to the stadium 45 minutes prior to the 7 o’clock kickoff. As is the case following weekend baseball games, the sky will light up with fireworks at the conclusion of the match.
Remaining tickets for the opener and for all other games can be purchased on the team’s official website (https://www.oneknoxsc.com/). Different pricing and package options are available for individual matches, clusters of games and for the season as a whole. The regular-season home slate, which runs through the end of October, consists of 17 matches. If you prefer to watch from the comfort of home, all matches – both home and away – can be streamed through subscription service ESPN+. Announced just last month, too, was the creation of a One Knox women’s team, helmed by former Carson-Newman women’s coach Simon Duffy, which will begin competing immediately in the developmental USL W League. Six of the team’s 12 matches, the first of which takes place on May 10, will be played at Covenant Health Park, as well, with similar ticketing options available via the same site.
* Named after the Kansas City Chiefs founder and former owner, a proponent of both versions of football (and tennis) who is credited with coining the phrase “Super Bowl,” the U.S. Open Cup is the nation’s oldest cup competition, open to all professional and amateur teams that qualify for it. Think of it as soccer’s answer to the U.S. Open of golf.
** The Jägermeister Cup is an interleague tournament running concurrent to the league season, set up World Cup-style with six groups of either six or seven teams apiece and comprising every club in the top two tiers of the USL. Exclusive to League One teams in 2024, its first year of existence, the competition was expanded to include the Championship in 2025.
