A brace from newcomer Colton Swan pushed the Charleston Battery past the visiting Florida Badgers 2-1 in Round 1 of the 2026 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup on Wednesday night at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant, S.C.
Swan opened the scoring in the 21st minute after a well-executed short corner kick was served to the back post inside the Badger’s penalty box. Another new Battery addition for the 2026 season, Kirill Pakhomov nodded the ball back across the face of goal where Swan provided the final touch into the nets with a diving header. The Battery enjoyed the majority of possession, the advantage in free kicks, and the better of play for the rest of the first half and narrowly missed increasing their advantage on several occasions.
With Battery up 1-0, both teams returned to the field to open the second half with more of the same patterns of play around the field.
The match turned on its head in the 66th minute as visiting Florida, against the run of play, found a gap in the Battery backline for Dave Don to provide a perfectly weighted ball into the feet of Dave Altidor who collected the through ball, cut into the center of the park, and curled a shot up and over Battery keeper Marc-Edouard Barthelemy to level the match. The loud celebrations of the entire Badger’s bench at the corner flag surely had the South Florida UPSL side thinking a “Cupset” was in the works in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
The Battery took the setback in stride and never broke character as they again dominated possession, the advantage in free kicks, and the better of play versus the visibly fatiguing Badgers over the final 20 minutes of the match. Numerous stoppages for Badger’s players cramping up over the final minutes of the match created an enormous amount of stoppage time with nine minutes to be added to the second half.
The Battery didn’t panic, stayed with the script and in the 12th minute of second-half stoppage time provided another accurate corner kick into the Badger’s goalmouth where Graham Smith headed the ball down and goalward for Swan to bag his brace with another header past the outstretched arms of scrambling Badger keeper, John Berner. The match ended just seconds later and the Battery advanced over the Badgers — who had a feisty and solid performance in their Open Cup debut.
“We just want to win,” Swan said. “I think all of us are just obsessed with winning. I think that’s what gets us to this point, to this level, and hopefully on to bigger and better things as well. I’m just incredibly grateful to score in front of the home crowd and got a lot of people watching back home. It took a long preseason and a grind to get here. I’m just incredibly excited, “
“You see cupsets all the time,” said Battery Head Coach Ben Pirmann. “You see crazy things. The domination was there, but the final chance, you just focus on what you can influence. The boys did a great job to find the second goal right before the end of regulation, so they did their job. For me, I’m proud of Colton. Obviously, two goals is a big deal. That’s why he’s getting call-ups. That’s why he’s been playing great. He had a great game, even fighting through some cramps there at the end.”
The Battery now advance to Round 2 and will find out their next opponent in the upcoming draw later this week.