SC United Bantams Women

Carolina Ascent share the field, if not a fixture yet with a name attached, and that rivalry is the closest thing the Bantams have to a measuring stick in a division that has only just taken shape around them. The Bantams moved into the South Atlantic Division after their first season, and the meetings with Ascent carry weight without needing a nickname to prove it.

That first season, 2022, is still the reference point. Columbia's side topped their table before absorbing a first defeat, then settled for second in the South Central Division behind South Georgia Tormenta FC. No trophy came of it, but the run set an early standard the club has been measuring itself against since.

The nickname owes nothing to South Carolina. Bantams comes from Bradford City, the English club whose name the parent organisation borrowed when it adopted its own. The women's side plays its matches in front of 2,000 seats at the Southeastern Freight Lines Soccer Center on Sunbelt Boulevard, a ground built for crowds rather than spectacle, and that has suited a team still building a history worth watching from the stands.

Everything since, the early table-topping run, the shift in division, the games against Ascent, has grown out of that late start.