Asheville City

Darwin Jones played his way out of Asheville and onto Seattle Sounders FC, and that trade — a club too small to keep its best forward, big enough to develop one worth taking — sums up how Asheville City SC has spent its short life. Jimmy Wheeler and a group of friends put the club together in November 2016, and the men's team opened its account on 6 May 2017 with a 2–1 win over Georgia Revolution at Memorial Stadium, in front of more than 2,000 people. A women's side followed the same year.

The pandemic wiped out the planned move into USL League Two in 2020, so the men's team did not actually start there until 2021. It took two more years to win anything: the South Central Division title in 2023, taken with a 10–1–1 record, then defended in 2024 and 2025, with a run to the national semi-finals in 2024. The women's side, playing in the USL W League, matched that in 2025 — Southern Conference champions, a national semi-final of their own, and the South Central Division on top, retained into 2026. In 2024 the club reached the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup for the first time.

None of it has needed a big rival to sharpen it — there's already the Blue Ridge Derby against Chattanooga FC and the Carolina Clásico with Greenville FC, plus a Smoky Mountain Series against One Knoxville SC whenever the Open Cup throws them together. Renovation work pushed matches off Memorial Stadium in 2023, and Asheville City has played since on Greenwood Field, on the UNC Asheville campus.