In League Two’s 2025 season, the nation’s premier pre-professional league boasts clubs in over 140 communities across the United States, providing pro-style preparation and opportunities to players no matter where they’re from.

That opportunity has been at League Two’s core for 30 years. Through name changes, competition style revisions, club arrivals, departures, and arrivals again, that fact has remained the same for three decades. Through League Two, people have the chance to carve out real professional careers for themselves, both on the pitch and in front offices.

League Two’s longtime connection to the professional leagues is easily apparent when you turn on a match. In 2024, 29% of USL Championship players and 43% of USL League One players can trace their roots to League Two competition. But for 30 years, League Two has also enabled people to be some of the highest-level managers and decision-makers in the sport.

Richmond Kickers chairman Rob Ukrop owns a unique moment in League Two history. He was the league’s first MVP (then called the USISL Premier League, a semi-professional competition) in 1995, winning the 27-team league as the Kickers striker by scoring ten goals and providing four assists in 15 matches. He scored the last goal of the season, a 58th-minute goal to extend the lead in the final to 3-1. Ukrop also has the distinct honor of scoring the first two goals in New England Revolution history.

“I’ll be the first to admit there were a bunch of better players than me on that team,” Ukrop said. “I think I scored a couple big goals because guys put the ball in really good spots and it made me look good.”

It wasn’t just in league play that Ukrop and the Kickers shone that season. Famously, the 1995 Richmond Kickers won the U.S. Open Cup over El Paso Patriots, the final tournament before the addition of Major League Soccer in 1996. Ukrop scored the Kickers’ lone goal in the final, and scored his spot kick in the penalty shootout.

He was coached in that team by Dennis Viollet, one of the most prolific goal scorers in Manchester United history and a member of the legendary Busby Babes.

“He had this innate ability to bring us together,” Ukrop said. “I think what I remember most about 1995, every Monday was fitness day. It stunk.”

“We get out there on the field, just wore your running shoes and training gear, it took about an hour. It was miserable, But you know… fitness is a really cool way for kids and teens to bond. ‘You know coach, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing’ [we’d say], you have dinner together, you hang out, lived in a bunch of apartments together. It was just a really memorable summer, and it didn’t hurt that we won most of our games.”

Viollet coached the Kickers to 15 wins in 18 regular season matches in 1995, finishing with a +26 goal difference before winning the USISL Premier League Playoffs.

“Our team, we had all guys that had graduated college and it was the next step to hopefully catching a pro contract… guys would graduate from college, they’d play in the USISL for 3-4 months, then they pack up their car and go play in the indoor league,” Ukrop said.

He went through that experience himself – when he finished a summer with the Kickers, a 25-year-old Ukrop would stuff his Volvo 740 sedan with his clothes and a 36-inch television (a luxury at the time) and go to Raleigh or another nearby city where a club would pay him to play soccer.

Nowadays, he’s the lead decision-maker in Richmond, where he’s been the USL League One club’s chairman and CEO since 2019.

“Now the structure is so much different,” he said. “A lot of kids that are still in college, it’s great from the Kickers standpoint. We have a good relationship with Lionsbridge [FC], and what Mike Vest is doing. We’ve had players come in from there.”

League Two’s impact on the current Kickers roster is apparent – in 2024, 18 players on the club’s 25-man roster spent time in the pre-professional ranks, including former Lionsbridge FC fullback Simon Fitch. Josh Kirkland, who trained with the Kickers in the 2024 preseason, played for League Two’s Charlottesville Blues FC and earned a contract that same year.

The league Ukrop played in back in 1995 is very different from the one that exists today. In 2025, League Two will feature 144 competing clubs in 19 divisions across the country. Several clubs have either a direct internal connection or a partnership with professional clubs that scout the best talent League Two has. In 2024, over 4,000 players took the pitch, chasing a professional career.

Thanks to the foundation set by people like Ukrop, they will continue to have that opportunity.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, even if you’re the best player in the world,” Ukrop said. “They were part of a team. They’ve got to be. For me, it taught me great lessons about how to become a great teammate, and now I transfer that to how we operate the Richmond Kickers and the Richmond Ivy.”

Over the last 30 years, hundreds of players, coaches and executives have kicked off their soccer careers through the platform that League Two provides. From US Men’s National Team stars to someone getting their first contract in a lower league in the US or another country, League Two has provided the chance to be seen and to experience the closest thing to professional soccer in the United States.

For Ukrop, it was a central piece of how he built his career, and continues to be integral to his work today.

The 2025 USL League Two schedule will be announced Tuesday, February 18. Read up on which teams will be taking the pitch.