Shannon Seymour Steps Out, Up & In for Chicago House

“These are massive shoes to fill,” admitted the 27-year-old Shannon Seymour, a familiar face as a player with Chicago House AC but fresh in the big job as the team’s new head coach.

Much is expected from those in charge at the House, an amateur club “run like a professional club” according to all those involved. The previous coaching roster, since the team launched four years ago, is a short but mighty who’s-who of up-and-comers and Chicagoland legends.

Seymour’s immediate predecessor, Matt Poland, recently stepped up into the professional arena as inaugural head coach of USL League One side FC Naples. And the Man of the House before him was none other than CJ Brown – who won an MLS crown and multiple U.S. Open Cups during his 12 seasons in the heart of the Chicago Fire defense.

“I’m on the phone with Matt [Poland] all the time,” said Seymour about leaning on his former coach.

“He set such a high standard and I was always paying attention – all I had to do was take mental notes,” said Seymour about Poland, who led the House to back-to-back trips to the U.S. Open Cup – and a Third Round contest against the Chicago Fire in 2023. “You don’t want to fix anything that’s not broken.”

Seymour’s first game in charge of the team he proudly represented as a player ended in a win. But only just. The House needed a late goal in OT to eventually win out 3-2 and move on to the Second Matchday of 2025 Open Cup Qualifying – one unsteady step closer to a third straight berth at the big table.

“We made things difficult for ourselves and our touch wasn’t there,” said Seymour, born in Bourbonnais, Illinois and assistant coach for the women’s side at Benedictine University. “But all that matters is getting that win. It was a good way for the new guys to learn that there’s no tomorrow in the Open Cup – and I’ve been on both sides of it so I know. Every moment matters in these games.”

The Open Cup & the House

Chicago House AC and the Open Cup go together like hand and glove.

You hear it when Seymour talks about the tournament and a formative conversation he had with the club’s first coach, none other than Fire legend CJ Brown, who he grew up idolizing. “He told me you have to have a system, to believe in it, and trust it,” Seymour said of advice from the now-Chicago Fire assistant coach, who also insisted on “the need to adjust” to the players you have.

“That hasn’t left my mind since he said it,” said Seymour, who spent last season leading the House’s women’s team. “For a legend like CJ to say that, I’m ready to take it and run with it.”

Brown, a four-time Open Cup Champion, isn’t the only House connection to the glories of the Open Cup. Peter Wilt, owner and CEO, won four as the Fire’s President and GM and he calls the competition the “greatest sporting event in the country – maybe the whole world.”

Being tapped for the job by an icon of Chicago soccer like Wilt, helped Seymour when the time came to cross over officially from player to coach.

• READ: Open Cup Evangelist Peter Wilt at Home at the House

“This is a man who’s worked with top managers in the country for decades,” Seymour said of Wilt, who gave former USMNT boss Bob Bradley his first professional head-coaching post. “I know this is a hot seat, and there were some nerves at first, but I believe in myself.

“I have the edge of being a player,” he added.

Ready (Just About) for the Next Step

“I miss it. I miss playing,” said Seymour, whose parents, immigrants from the Bahamas, introduced him to the game at the age of four, and who talks about it with a kind of hushed devotion. “There’s the banter during warm-ups and catching up with the guys about their weeks.

“It all happened pretty fast,” he said about crossing the line dividing player from coach. He still gets out on the field now and when he has to “remind some of the younger guys what I’m about.” And what that was, and is, is someone attuned to the small details and “the little things that are easy to miss.”

As a player, he was conspicuous for his stout stature in the middle of the field and his elegance in dictating the patterns of play. He grew up in and around the melting pot of Chicago’s soccer scene and soaked it all in “like a sponge” as he often says. “I had a coach from South Africa and another from England, one more from Spain,” he mused about his early years, including stints with the U.S. Youth National Teams and Chicago Fire Academy. “There’s so much culture here in this city and I was around it all and learning all the different ways soccer can be played.”

And while it’s only one thin line of chalk, or paint, that now separates him from his players – it can bechasm filled with lava with no bottom in sight if not handled delicately. “You have to make examples of some players,” he said. “Let them know that the relationship isn’t the same as last year.”

Old Relationships & Respects Reformed

That’s easier said than done when one of those players is AR Smith, among Seymour’s closest friends since boyhood and “co-captain at the House for a year and a half.” Or goalkeeper Tony Halterman, seven years Seymour’s senior. But the new coach sees it all as a possibility and not a minefield.

“The respect you give and get is different as a coach than it is as a player – the dynamics change. But as a former player, I have the edge of knowing where the guys’ heads are at,” he said. “Stuff like their family life and what’s going on with them – adding that personal approach.”

In the end Seymour won’t be judged on approach, but on results. “There’s maybe one or two amateur clubs in the country that can hang with us,” he said about the Chicago club, among the cream of this country’s amateur scene. “These guys train four times a week and they’ve got to run to classes or work afterward. The standards here are very high.”

“We’re working on developing community and culture here – always – promoting diversity and grinding away,” he added. “keeping that Chicago blue-collar mentality alive.”

Seymour is Chicago soccer.

“There’s so much culture and talent here in the city,” said the former star at Northwestern University, where his coach, TimLenahan, singled him out for a “tremendous personality that other players just naturally gravitate to.”

“I’ve always felt really alive around the game here in Chicago,” said Seymour, a lifetime lover of the game occupied with the business of getting his House back to the Open Cup. “Chicago shows out for soccer.”

In his car, driving from his day job out at Benedictine University, the game is always on his mind. It’s that devotion to the cause, and to a club with a grind-or-die mentality, that makes Seymour a perfect fit.

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