Whitby Football Club is a Canadian semi-professional

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

club based in

Whitby, Ontario Whitby is a town in Regional Municipality of Durham, Durham Region in Ontario, Canada. Whitby is located in Southern Ontario east of Ajax, Ontario, Ajax and west of Oshawa, on the north shore of Lake Ontario and is home to the headquarters of D ...

that plays in the

League1 Ontario League1 Ontario (L1ON) is a semi-professional men's soccer league in Ontario, Canada. The league is sanctioned by the Canadian Soccer Association and the Ontario Soccer Association. League1 Ontario consists of three tiers – League1 Premier ...

men's and women's divisions. The club was founded in 2015 as Darby FC as a partnership between Whitby FC and Darlington SC.

Founders

The club was founded in 2015 as a joint partnership between

Durham Region The Regional Municipality of Durham (), informally referred to as Durham Region, is a regional municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada. Located east of Toronto and the Regional Municipality of York, it forms the east end of the Greater Toronto A ...

clubs Darlington Soccer Club and Whitby Soccer Club with the name Darby coming from

name blending Name blending, meshing, or melding is the practice of combining two existing names to form a new name. It is most commonly performed upon marriage. According to Western tradition, the wife normally adopts the husband's surname upon marriage. Name ...

the two names.

Darlington SC

Darlington Soccer Club is a youth soccer club from the municipality of

Clarington Clarington (Canada 2021 Census, 2021 population 101,427) is a lower-tier municipality in the Regional Municipality of Durham in Ontario, Canada. It was incorporated in 1973 as the town of Newcastle with the merging of the town of Bowmanville, the ...

. Its roots date back to the foundation of the Darlington Soccer League founded in 1880; which is argued to be the oldest in Canada.

Whitby FC

Whitby FC is a youth soccer club in

. It was founded in 1966 as the Whitby Iroquois SC. In 2016, the club rebranded as Whitby FC with a new logo.

History

The club's first team entered the women's division of League1 Ontario in

2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

. Their inaugural game resulted in a 1–1 draw with

North Mississauga SC North Mississauga Soccer Club is a Canadian semi-professional soccer club based in Mississauga, Ontario. The club was founded in 1982 as a youth soccer club and added its men's semi-professional club in League1 Ontario in 2016. The team plays ho ...

. They finished their debut season in eighth place, out of nine clubs. In 2018, Darby added their men's team to the men's league, which is one division below the top-tier

Canadian Premier League The Canadian Premier League (CPL or CanPL; ) is a professional Association football, soccer league in Canada and the highest level of the Canadian soccer league system. The league comprises eight teams, from five of provinces and territories of ...

. Many of the players on their inaugural roster came from the prior year's Durham United FA roster, as Durham did not enter a team for the 2018 season. Their debut match on April 28, 2018 was against the

Woodbridge Strikers Woodbridge Strikers Soccer Club is a Canadian semi-professional soccer club based in Woodbridge, Ontario. The club was founded in 1976 as a youth soccer club and added its semi-professional club in League1 Ontario in 2014. The team plays home g ...

and resulted in a 1–1 draw. In December 2024, the club announced the re-branding of their League1 Ontario team to Whitby FC for the 2025 season.

Seasons

Men

Women

Notable former players

The following players have either played at the professional or international level, either before or after playing for the League1 Ontario team:

Men

Women

References

{{Toronto Sports Association football clubs established in 2015 Soccer clubs in Ontario League1 Ontario teams 2015 establishments in Ontario Sport in Whitby, Ontario