For the third time in the past four years, South Georgia Tormenta (USL-1) and Charleston Battery (USL-C) have been paired in the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup. The familiar foes had split the previous two meetings and Tuesday night’s Third Round match at Patriots Point saw the host Battery cruise to a comfortable 4-0 victory.
MD Myers loves to score goals against Tormenta. Myers recorded a hat trick against Tormenta in the 2024 tilt and followed it up with a historic hat trick in this season’s tournament. Myers is now the first player in the Modern Era to record hat tricks in back-to-back Open Cup campaigns.
“Its exciting, before the game today I was thinking it would be hard to top what I did last year against Tormenta,” Myers said. “The first goal came (by) just hanging around the net and then a couple more easy goals landed at my feet. I’m just happy to help the team win.
“I’m a poacher around the goal, I just like to get in the box for one-time finishes. It was just working for me tonight.”
The match started with the Battery pressing the attack in the first quarter hour. The best chance of this run of play was when Jackson Conway broke free on a long run and forced a sprawling 1v1 save from Tormenta goalkeeper Austin Pack. After the save, the momentum of the match swung in the visitor’s favor and Tormenta enjoyed its best spell of attack over the following few minutes.
Against this run of play, the Battery earned a corner kick that was cleared by Tormenta to the top of the box where the Battery’s Chris Allen collected a poorly cleared ball, faked a quick shot and cut to his right where he drove a ball that deflected off a Tormenta defender’s foot. The ball looped up and over the crowd in the box and into the bottom left corner of the net to give the Battery a 1-0 lead in the 32nd minute.
Tormenta looked to be getting back into the game just before the break after they won a penalty kick in the 45th minute. A trip inside the box awarded Tormenta the penalty kick but the Battery keeper, Christian Garner, guessed correctly by diving to his right to turn away the low shot for a corner kick. The Battery cleared the following corner kick, catching Tormenta in a classic counter-attack situation. Charleston drove the length of the pitch before slotting the ball into the feet of Myers inside of the Tormenta box. Myers dribbled around a defender to calmly place the ball into the back of the net as the Battery took a 2-0 advantage to the locker room.
The second half was all Charleston. The field seemed to tilt in the Battery’s favor and wave after wave of black and gold threatened the Tormenta nets. All of that pressure created a mistake inside of the Tormenta box in the 52nd minute that Myers was first to pounce on and deposit in the net for a 3-0 lead.
The Battery attack kept Tormenta pinned deep in their half and in the 70th minute it was Myers again, pouncing on a Tormenta mistake to complete his historic hat trick. Shortly after his third goal, Myers got a curtain call and was subbed out of the game and into Lamar Hunt US Open Cup history.
In 2024, Myers needed 120 minutes to score his hat trick, but Tuesday only needed 70 minutes to complete the historic Cup moment.
The Battery maintained its dominant attack but was unable to find the net again. The result books the Battery into the Round of 32. The draw is set for April 17th.
“I think the score-line was a little bit flattering for us overall because it nearly was 1-1 for the entire first half,” said Battery Coach Ben Pirmann. “Credit to Tormenta, they played a good game, but in the end of it I think we did a lot of good movements and selfless attacks to create those chances and finish them off. It was good to see MD bang in some goals and for Chris (Allen) get his first (goal) for the club in his third season and a younger player, Viggo (Ortiz Cordova) making his debut.
“A good performance, and with these tournaments, it’s kind of chaos, you never know how it’s going to play out, so we’ll take it and advance and turn our attention to league play on Saturday.”