Laredo, Texas, is right on the border.
The city, the largest inland port in the U.S., was once part of Mexico. Before that it was a part of an independent Texas and even the capital of its own country, the Republic of the Rio Grande, for 283 days back in 1840. Much like the city it calls home, Laredo Heat SC – the ambitious amateur Cinderellas in the mix for a seventh run at the U.S. Open Cup this year – embody the complications, possibilities and ecstasies of life on a very real imaginary line.
“When you come to the stadium to watch a game, it feels like you might be in Mexico – It’s just something different here – you feel the passion and you feel it deep,” said Johnny Ibarra, 42 year-old coach of the Heat’s first team who’ll host local Division II pros El Paso Locomotive FC in the First Round of the 2026 Open Cup on March 19.
He’s talking about PEG Energy Stadium. Completed in 2024, it stands five miles from the banks of the Rio Grande River that separates the USA from Mexico. With its soccer-specific playing surface, and free-standing roof over the grandstand to protect fans from the punishing South Texas sun, it's the envy of many a professional team and packed full, often into the thousands, on gamedays.
Ibarra, who’s also the club’s all-time top scorer, caps leader and top assist-maker from his playing days between 2004 and 2014, was born Monterrey, across the border in Mexico’s state of Nuevo Leon. He trained as a youngster in the fabled Rayados Academy. When he came North, crossing the border in 2014 for an exhibition game, his talent was noticed and an invitation to stay was proffered.
An emotional pull to the city of Laredo and its fledgling soccer club was born. “I knew I wanted to stay because of the way the owners treat the players,” said Ibarra, who calls it a “huge honor” to be able to coach the team that changed his life in so many ways. “The way I felt identified with the city and the way the club felt like a family right away.”
The family that Ibarra came to feel a part of was the club itself, Laredo Heat SC, but also, in another way, the Vaswanis – the family who owns the club and built the unlikely soccer outpost from literal dust on the border. They didn’t come from Mexico, no, but from Sindh, on its own borderland on the India-Pakistan line. The club’s owner, Shashi, came to North America, first with a stop in Toronto over the northern border in Canada, before settling with his father, a tailor, in Laredo in 1980 as a 15-year-old in search of a better life.
It’s an unlikely immigrant story for this corner of South Texas, but it turned out to be a wildly successful one. Shashi started his business empire with a video game distribution company, before adding one business after another on top – touching on property development and hotel operations and becoming a massive economic force in the area.
Shashi Vaswani is the reason Laredo Heat SC has a stadium to call home. And it was all born of a broken dream. When he was 15, and wanted nothing more than to be a professional player, he found no organized soccer in the city of Laredo. A man of forceful personality, and massive ingenuity, he set out to change that in 2004 in order to “ensure no other child in Laredo would ever face that same dead end.”
PEG Energy Stadium is home to multiple fields and a soccer-specific main stadium. It’s home to the Laredo Heat family, which includes a tuition-free academy system tapping into the massive talent pool of the Rio Grande Valley. The trajectory is clear: with effort, skills and some good luck, a young player can rise through to the first team. Maybe even beyond.
Coach Ibarra, as a player, was a member of a Laredo Heat team that won the PDL (Premier Development League, now known as USL League Two) national championship in 2007. He won multiple conference titles and reached the national finals on one other occasion. In his inaugural year with the club, he had a major hand in one of its most astounding achievements. The run to the 2014 U.S. Open Cup Round of 32, which included a road win over Division Two pros the Fort Lauderdale Strikers (then of the NASL) and ended with a slim loss to MLS’s Houston Dynamo FC, still looms large in the legend and lore of Open Cup Cinderella stories.
Coach Johnny Ibarra has been officially ratified to continue at the helm for 2026.
— Laredo Heat SC (@LaredoHeatSC) February 12, 2026
From Youth Academy to UPSL to leading our Senior Team in the Open Cup and USL League Two — the standard remains the same.
Continuity. Culture. Commitment. 🔥#VamosLaredo pic.twitter.com/oUVftPcjKA
“It was an incredible experience, to go there, to Florida and to beat a professional team to move on,” said Ibarra, captain of that 2014 Open Cup side, of that muggy night in late May at the legendary Lockhart Stadium that ended 3-2 for the Heat after a massive comeback and a winning penalty kick in second-half stoppage time. “It was one of the biggest moments this club has ever had.”
“It was really something to remember,” added long-time General Manager JJ Vela, who was there in South Florida that night on the very patch of ground where Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami play today. “You’re down 2-0 to a professional team on the road and you’re thinking: this is over. But things happen, even big things.
“It was one of those awesome feelings, probably one of the most exciting feelings that we've had,” added Vela with a wide smile. “That particular run was so special.”
It earned the Heat another game, this time against the Houston Dynamo, members of the top flight of American pro soccer known as Major League Soccer (MLS). It also earned them the $15,000 prize as the amateur team to reach the farthest in that year’s tournament. It’s worth noting that, if they can match that achievement this year, the prize would be a substantially increased $50,000.
“He told me that is one of the best experiences that he's ever had as a player,” said 17-year-old Asael Montoya, a member of the Heat team that will line up again in the Open Cup on March 19 (LIVE on U.S. Soccer’s YouTube channel) against USL Championship pros El Paso Locomotive. “He [Coach Ibarra] keeps reminding us that we can make history for the Laredo Heat too if we focus, and if we push together.”
Montoya, on the cusp of breaking full-time into the USL League Two first team, has been playing for Coach Ibarra since he was seven years-old, coming up through the Heat’s youth academy. Montoya’s parents hail from Mexico, but he’s Laredo-born and bred.
Much like the club itself, the Open Cup is a place where borders are blurred and, sometimes, erased altogether. If a pro team can lose to an amateur team – which happens every year in this 111-year-old competition – where are the borders exactly? How do we know where we can and can’t go? Who knows what’s off-limits?
“It's a great opportunity for them to be seen, especially if you win,” said Rishi Viswani, the son of owner Shashi who's been a part of the club since he was a kid. “That's something we tell them: If you want to get noticed, win one, then everyone's going to start taking notice of the team and see who's playing.”
We’re back. And we’re hosting.
— Laredo Heat SC (@LaredoHeatSC) January 27, 2026
Laredo Heat SC will host El Paso Locomotive FC in Round One of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.
📅 March 19 | 🕢 7:30 PM | 📍 PEG Energy Stadium#USOpenCup #VamosLaredo pic.twitter.com/rInOi91JGe
The Heat – even as hosts in their sparkling new Stadium, and with all of Laredo’s passions pushing them forward – will be the underdogs when the Locomotive comes chugging into town. But even in the arrangement of this David and Goliath meeting, you can see the blurring of lines, and the possibilities alive in that blurring. Both Memo Diaz and Beto Avila, full-paid pros who shine with the Locomotive, got their start with the Laredo Heat.
And Montoya, the native-born son of immigrants playing for a club founded by immigrants, understands the meaning of it all better than most. “Living in a border town, it helps us a lot because we learn from different cultures, not only from one,” he said, on the cusp of a big day when all things become possible. “And that helps us grow up because we see different things from different perspectives.”
Laredo Heat SC will host USL Championship side El Paso Locomotive FC at PEG Energy Stadium on Thursday, March 19 at 8:30 p.m. ET. The match—the final of the First Round—will be broadcast on U.S. Soccer's YouTube channel.
Fontela has been a ussoccer.com contributor since 2017. Follow him @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.