Pride in the crest is huge in Charleston.
It starts with third-year coach Ben Pirman, who’s firm in the belief that “every time you pull on this shirt, and represent the Battery, it’s a big deal.” And that filters all the way down the line in the locker room at this historic 32-year-old Division II club.
But sometimes, every now and then, you have to take your hat off to an individual player. A star performer on a given night. In the Open Cup Third Round on April 15 that man was Matthew Dylan Myers (MD to his friends). The 24-year-old, New Jersey-born striker scored three against Division III contenders South Georgia Tormenta in a 4-0 rout.
“I’m just happy to have helped make it a little easier than we did last year,” Myers told usopencup.com, remembering back to that same fixture in last year’s Open Cup, when he also scored three goals (that 2024 contest was tighter and needed a late goal in the dying seconds of OT to seal a 3-2 Battery win). “And, yeah, I mean it’s always nice to get three goals.”
Strikers are a different breed. They need that little bit of selfishness, the roaring ego, to believe they can waltz into hard-nosed defenses and wriggle through to where the goals – and the glories – hide. Four days after scoring a second-straight hat trick against the Tormenta in Open Cup play, Myers scored two more goals in a league win against Indy Eleven to earn him USL Championship Player of the Week honors.
“Five goals in two games – that’s high, high-level numbers,” said Coach Pirmann, who cut his teeth at Detroit City FC, helping the current USL Championship pro powers from Michigan up from their early life in the amateur ranks. “When MD plays, we just have a high energy in this team – but I don’t care who scores, or if the other team kicks the ball in their own net a hundred times this year, as long as we’re scoring and winning games.”
There’s a sense at the Battery that no one, not even a five-goal-in-two-games hot hand like Myers, is bigger than the club. And it’s no put-on. It’s the real thing. “As a striker it’s important to get into the right positions, but really I just think the team is clicking right now,” said Myers, who suffered a knee knock late in pre-season when Pirmann said his ace striker was playing with “fire in his boots” and has returned from those five weeks out with renewed purpose and energy. “I’m just enjoying being out there.”
Strikers the world over, whether MD Myers or Harry Kane, have to come up with little mental tricks for when the goals aren’t going in. When your job is to score, to put numbers up on the board, you have to find a way to help your team when the goals dry up (because they do). For Myers, the secret is hard work. Grind. It’s his foundational bedrock. “Work hard every day, put in a little extra every day, that’s where confidence comes from and that’s how you can dig out of a slump or just keep up consistency,” he said. “The most important thing is being able to turn up week in and week out.”
It’s a recipe that works. “When MD plays, we just have a high energy in this team,” said Pirmann, who admits to his Battery side “not being the same team” in the five weeks Myers was out with injury.
All of this is made more impressive by the fact that the Battery are a far different team this year than they were in 2024, when they reached the USL Championship Conference Final Playoff after a dominant run in the regular season. The loss of league top scorer Nick Markanich, who was crowned league MVP before he moved on to CD Castellon in Spain, could have put another club – one without the firm belief in the power of the unit over the individual – out for a year of rebuilding and disappointment.
“It’s two years in a row now that we’ve sold our best player, at least on paper (it was Augi Williams in 2023),” said Pirmann, who brought in league veteran Cal Jennings to partner Myers, and fill, in part, the gap left by Markanich’s departure. It opens up the possibility of playing with two out-and-out strikers. It also led the Battery to wins in four of their first six league games – and a spot in the Open Cup’s Round of 32 where, for a second year running, they’ll square off with a team from Major League Soccer.
“We rate ourselves against anybody in the country,” said Myers, full of sudden confidence when talking about his teammates, his comrades who grind with him every day down in this country’s Division II pro ranks. “I think we have a lot of players who could be playing at the MLS [Div. I] level. We want to show the world that we have talent and that we’re always pushing together.”
Myers was in the Battery side that, last year, came a coin’s toss away from beating MLS powers, and 2019 Open Cup Champions, Atlanta United in our Round of 16. “We took them to penalties [0-0 aet] and we basically had the game in our hands,” he recalled. “We can compete with anyone.”
The Battery’s opponent in this year’s Round of 32 (LIVE on Paramount+) are three-time Open Cup Champions and four-time MLS toppers D.C. United, and their star striker Christian Benteke. It’s a rematch of the famous 2008 Open Cup Final played between the two teams, back when Ozzie Alonso was a rookie with the Battery before he moved on to an All-Star future with the Seattle Sounders in MLS. That team, same as the one of today, had no fear of taking on the so-called big boys from the top flight.
“It’s exciting playing a team from a higher division because we feel we have players just as good as them and we want to prove ourselves,” said Myers, who’s unlikely to get as much of the ball against United as he did against Tormenta. “We always want to be the hardest-working team out there at all times.
“I love the dirty work,” he insisted. “I take pride in it and so do my teammates here – it’s led to a lot of success over the years and it’s an exciting way to play because we’re never turned off, always going for it. It’s something I’ve really enjoyed in my time here.”
Myers isn’t worried about fixture congestion – the exhausting reality of playing in the Open Cup, the USL Jägermeister Cup and league play. There’s a passion, a pride, that bubbles up from somewhere deep in him. “You got two games in a week, it’s exciting,” he laughed, considering all the chances to score and get into the positions to help his team. “I’d play for free. The more games the better, so I love it.”
Between keeping alive the traditions of a proud American soccer club, scoring goals by the bagful and earning the chance to knock a team from the top division off their vaunted perch in the Open Cup, Myers is a happy young man. “I get to do what I love for a living,” he said. “It’s pretty awesome.”
It’s unlikely Myers will hit another hat trick against D.C. United, but he might. And Pirmann and the rest of the Battery can, as always, count on this striker’s raw energy and the dirty work that defines him.
Fontela is editor-in-chief of ussoccer.com/us-open-cup. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.