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Saturday Night Fever might be an applicable theme to the 2015 home schedule for the Charleston Battery. The Battery, 2015 USL affiliate of the Houston Dynamo, will have the good fortune of kicking off in twelve of their home affairs on Saturday nights. I repeat TWELVE! That's 12 out of 15 home matches slated for Saturday night primetime at Blackbaud Stadium! This provides the Battery fans an abundance of opportunities to check out the home club on a weekend night in Charleston. As you see in leagues not named the NBA, MLB or NFL, whether it's the NBA's D-League or the MLB's minor league system, no matter the success of the team, weekday games are a hard sell. The 2015 slate includes just one weekday game, a lone Wednesday game. Accompanied by one Friday date, that is how the days layout for this season: 12 Saturdays, 1 Wednesday, 1 Friday.
The 2015 schedule is also one of a few firsts for the USL Pro. The home opener and season opener on March 21st at the Baud will be the first match for the newly formed Toronto FC II. On March 27th, they will travel to Charlotte to face the Charlotte Independence, who will be making their USL Pro debuts.
A big reason for the new era schedule was the addition of 10 teams to the league. Now featuring 2 conferences, each team will get a home-away series with each of their conference mates. Additionally to that, six matches will be rivalry centric. For the Battery, that means 4 more games with Wilmington and Charlotte, and one a piece against Richmond and Harrisburg.
I love the new schedule style by the USL PRO, especially the focus on rivalries. Watching your team battle is always thrilling, but there's a special type of joy when it's a battle with your rivals. Still looking forward to seeing what players may join the Battery on loan from Houston, maybe some of the talented rookie class, the Battery fans should gain even more enthusiasm as we get closer to the Carolina Challenge Cup now knowing what an awesome schedule lays ahead of Charleston in 2015.
Check out the entire Charleston Battery schedule here and, of course, be ready for next Wednesday's edition of Carson's Charleston Charge!