Carolina Ascent face Tampa Bay Sun in home opener

CAROLINA ASCENT

Riley Parker and her Carolina Ascent teammates will open their home schedule today against the Tampa Bay Sun at American Legion Memorial Stadium.

There’s nothing small about home openers for the Carolina Ascent.

They won the first match in Gainbridge Super League history last season while setting an attendance record. On Saturday, it will be a showdown between the two best teams from that inaugural campaign.

Kickoff against the Tampa Bay Sun at American Legion Memorial Stadium is 7 p.m. TV coverage is expanding with the national broadcast streamed on Peacock with local coverage on WAXN (TV 64) and Telemundo Charlotte (Spanish).

Celebrated with the Players’ Shield as the best team during the regular season, Carolina did everything but win the title last spring. They finished the regular season with the most wins (13), goals (46), fewest goals conceded (26), most clean sheets (12), and greatest goal-differential (plus-20). What they didn’t achieve was the league title they coveted, losing at home 2-1 to fourth-seeded Fort Lauderdale in a semifinal. That went to the second-seeded Sun.

The entire league will be better than last year, with most of the issues of building a club on and off the pitch behind them. Five of the eight original teams will have new head coaches. At least twenty players have transferred from one club to another within the league for the new season, including the 2024/25 Player of the Year Emina Eki?, who departed Spokane Zephyr FC to join Lexington SC in her home state of Kentucky.

The Ascent have 10 new players on the roster with 18 returning. Four were starters in game one, with two coming off the bench, so patience is needed in finding the chemistry achieved last season.  That was especially obvious in the midfield, where Carolina was a dominant force on both sides of the ball. 

Coach Philip Poole admits that his job has gotten harder with the squad’s increased depth and experience. 

“It was about who's going to start and who's not last season. Now, it's about who's missing out on the 18 (game day roster), and it's fully-fledged pros missing out on the team now. We've got a lot of depth, got a lot of competition, which gives us some flexibility to do different things against different teams. But overall, we’ve got a good squad.”

It’s already a different look in the league table. Dallas Trinity sits on top after two wins, a spot the Ascent occupied for the first 11 weeks of season one. After a draw against Fort Lauderdale last Saturday, Carolina is eighth in the now nine-team league. Tampa had a rough start, and ninth after losses in their first two games. The Sun fell 2-1at Brooklyn, and more surprisingly, 3-2 at home to the Super League’s newest team, Sporting Jax.

Last time out

Adding to the variety of offensive and defensive records achieved in the league’s first year, Carolina set another last Saturday, scoring the fastest goal in league history, 43 seconds into the match, off the foot of newcomer Maddie Mercado.

Unable to capitalize on other good chances, they carried the 1-0 lead into the second half. With 18 minutes to play, Fort Lauderdale United equalized, then took the lead 11 minutes later. 

“I think it was a bit of a game of two halves,” Poole said. “In the first half, we were very good, very comfortable. Had the chance to score multiple times and didn't put the chances away.” 

The relentless nature of the Ascent kept pushing, and they were rewarded with a goal by Audrey Harding one minute into added time to claim a draw that was pleasing if not satisfying.

“We came out and we had to weather a storm in the second half,” Poole said. “I thought the game got away from us, but it shows a lot of character. A player like Audrey, a game changer like Audrey, comes on and gets the business done.”

It will take time and competition to find the chemistry that they achieved in a dominant six-game winning streak last spring, which saw stone-cold finishing on the offensive end and a strangulation of opportunities for opponents in their own half.

“There's a difference between any preseason game and any regular-season game,” said Poole. “Just a different level of intensity, different level of competitiveness. I thought we handled it really well for the first 50 minutes. And then, the game got away from us a little bit, whether that is from a conditioning standpoint, whether it's from a football standpoint, we lost our way in the game for about 20 or 25 minutes, and we paid the price. And then we were able to wrestle it back.”

His veteran players understand that as well.

“Games change throughout the entire game,” said Jill Aguilera. “We scored early, and then we were able to keep that lead in the second half. We started kind of losing control of the game a little bit, and they were able to score two goals. That's obviously not great, but for us to be able to come back and get that point at the very end of the game and not accept a loss, I think, is huge.

“We still have so much room to grow. But to know that that is our mentality, to get that point and still fight back is a good starting point.”

Also:

Who's who on the Carolina Ascent's 2025-26 roster

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