Another year of Soccer ‘n’ Sweet Tea means another year of covering all of the Carolina teams in the United States’ largest amateur soccer league: the Premier Development League. To start this year off right, let’s take a quick look at what’s new for our PDL teams and what we all have to look forward to in the 2018 season.

What’s New This Year?

Last season, seven Carolina teams competed with four non-Carolina teams in a large South Atlantic Division. That number is now down to five Carolina teams and one non-Carolina team with newcomer Lionsbridge FC joining the division this year … and two notable Carolina teams missing out.

The division still has both 2017 South Atlantic Champion Myrtle Beach Mutiny and the 2017 PDL National Champion Charlotte Eagles returning in 2018.

Joining those two are Greensboro’s Carolina Dynamo, Durham’s Tobacco Road FC, Cary’s NCFC U23, and Lionsbridge FC, which calls Newport News, Virginia, home.

The Wilmington Hammerheads and the South Carolina United Bantams will not be fighting for South Atlantic glory this season.

The Hammerheads appear to have stopped competing. We haven’t heard any official news on this, but Ryan Allen wrote a story about their demise earlier this morning. Here’s hoping they can make a comeback in 2019.

The Bantams meanwhile are still in the PDL, but will be competing in the Southern Conference in 2018.

This is a strange move for them as their travel budget will likely double after leaving the South Atlantic. Still, the team joins three other former South Atlantic Division clubs in the Deep South Division this season, and it will still play several matches against Carolina teams this year.

When do games start?

NCFC U23 kicks things off on Friday, May 11 when they host Lionsbridge FC.

For most of our Carolina teams, the season kicks off for most of our teams May 12, with the CarolinDynamo hosting Tobacco Road and the Charlotte Eagles hosting the Myrtle Beach Mutiny.

Finally, the South Carolina Bantams start their season May 22 on the road against Peachtree City MOBA.

For team schedules, make sure to click your team’s name in the paragraph above. We’ll have custom team schedules on our Instagram account in the coming weeks (yes, we still have three months until PDL play kicks off).

For updates on these teams, be sure to follow Soccer ‘n’ Sweet Tea in 2018 (what we’re calling version 2.0) on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And sign up for our newsletter too.

Finally, if you don’t see enough coverage of your team out there, be part of the solution and write about them! That’s what we’re doing! Please reach out to us. We would love to have more coverage of each one of the soccer teams in the Carolinas from a fan perspective, and we’d love to help you provide your team’s voice here at SNST.

We’re all looking forward to another fun year in the PDL, and we hope you are too.