— When the Carolina RailHawks host the New England Revolution Wednesday at WakeMed Soccer Park (WRAL-2; 1550 The Ticket), it will be a 10th anniversary bookend to the last and only time the RailHawks and Revs met in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, and Carolina’s deepest run in the venerable soccer tournament.

The RailHawks played like an expansion team for their inaugural 2007 season. They lost 12 and won only eight of their 28 regular season games, developing a reputation for goonish play that earned the moniker "JailHawks" from opposing supporters.

Caleb Norkus, a former North Carolina Tar Heels standout, joined the RailHawks for their debut campaign and was a regular at left back.

“We had a really good team and could play with anyone,” Norkus says. “I think we proved that on a few occasions, but we weren’t the most consistent and didn’t really have our team dynamic figured out yet.”

Yet Carolina saved their best soccer for the U.S. Open Cup. The single-elimination format suited the hardscrabble RailHawks, and they improbably flew through the tournament’s early rounds before successive 1-0 victories in Cary against the Chicago Fire of Major League Soccer and USL rival Richmond Kickers.

In their first season as a soccer club, the RailHawks had reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open Cup. Their opponent was the New England Revolution, a talented team that had played in the MLS Eastern Conference Final five straight seasons, winning three times. But New England had never won an MLS or Open Cup championship.

Against the RailHawks, New England were without leading scorer Taylor Twellman and defender Jay Heaps, the current Revolution manager. But head coach Steve Nicol’s starting XI included such standouts as Steve Ralston, Michael Parkhurst, Shalrie Joseph and Pat Noonan.

The match was played in New Britain, Connecticut at Veterans Stadium, a lofty name for a small, multi-purpose facility used mainly for New Britain High School athletics. A reported crowd of 4,203 ventured out on a temperate Tuesday night. But the play on the field proved anything but mild.

The RailHawks grabbed the early lead thanks to a goal by Anthony Maher, one-half of a pair of bruising brothers from New Jersey recruited by tempestuous Carolina manager Scott Schweitzer. Norkus says years before, as an eighth grader growing up in Raleigh, he briefly switched from striker to sweeper after watching Schweitzer as an All-American defender with NC State.

“I used to get red cards and yellow cards because I would talk back to the referee, because I saw him doing it,” Norkus says. “I, like, idolized him.”

A five-minute kerfuffle saw both Joseph and RailHawks leading scorer Connally Edozien sent off before halftime. Then, Jeff Larentowicz knotted the score for New England mere minutes later.

In the 80th minute, Carolina went down to nine players when defender David Stokes was ejected. Regulation time came and went, then Noonan scored the game-winner early in extra time for the Revs’ 2-1 victory.

On the match, there were a total of three ejections from 11 cards and 37 fouls.

A month later, New England defeated FC Dallas to win their first and still only U.S. Open Cup.

Norkus, today an assistant coach for Tobacco Road FC in Durham, says he often thinks back to that wild 2007 match, and the RailHawks brush with history.

“I remember the feeling of us scoring first, and the belief that we could actually do it,” Nokus recalls. “And then feeling how that got ripped away with certain calls. We knew afterwards that it was a great game, but also knew how close we were.”

THE RED KITS ARE COMING

Nine years later, a similarly snakebitten RailHawks team hosts the Revolution in the fourth round of the 103rd U.S. Open Cup. After winning their opening four games this regular season, Carolina finished the NASL spring season on a six-match winless skid, capped by a 4-1 thumping at Indy Eleven last weekend that handed the spring season title to Indy.

But from 2007 to 2012, the Open Cup has proven an elixir for what ails the RailHawks. The task will be daunting Wednesday evening. Although the Revolution have only three wins out of 14 games this MLS season, their rested squad has not played for over two weeks due to an MLS break for the Copa América Centenario.

However, New England restarts their regular season this Saturday at Vancouver. So it’s uncertain whether Revs manager Jay Heaps will choose to run out his rusty regulars, or save some for the Whitecaps three days later. New England’s more renowned options include Lee Nguyen, Juan Agudelo, Diego Fagundez and Kelyn Rowe. And then there’s Kei Kamara, last year’s MLS co-Golden Boot winner, who came to New England last month on a trade from the Columbus Crew.

The RailHawks ran out a mostly first-string XI at Indy on Saturday. But with their NASL season on hiatus until July 2, Carolina doesn’t have to worry about preserving its players. Of greater concern for the RailHawks is their sudden dirth at holding midfield, with Matt Watson recovering from an injury suffered against Jacksonville and James Marcelin just completing his Copa América play with Haiti.

This year’s RailHawks would do well to follow the example of their 2012-2014 predecessors, who enjoyed U.S. Open Cup wins over MLS competition and made a couple of runs to the tournament’s quarterfinal round. Or just look toward the same spirit that propelled the last RailHawks team to face the Revolution in the Open Cup.

“It was real fun, but the soccer wasn’t always the greatest,” Norkus remembers. “We always had a lot of heart, that’s for sure.”