Huntsville City FC: "We view our kits as storytelling devices"

When Huntsville City FC kick off their 2026 season on Monday night, they'll do so wearing some of the best kits in American soccer.

Using two space-themed shirts – an astronaut orange home kit and a moon-inspired away shirt – Huntsville are leaning into the culture of the city and their connections with NASA to create a unique identity in lower division soccer.

"We view our kits as really storytelling devices," said Managing Director Chad Emerson in an exclusive conversation with SixOneFive Soccer. "Their practical reason is names and numbers, so the referees can call a foul or an awardable, but really it's for the visual effect that the fans connect with."

Huntsville, the home of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has a unique connection with the space industry, a connection that the club has fully leaned into. Their 2025 secondary jersey, aptly named the "To the Moon Kit", features an actual photo of the moon sublimated onto the front of the kit (Emerson made sure to emphasize that it was all done by their designers without the use of AI).

Their boldest kit to date was a full departure from their typical color scheme, but a kit that fully embraced the NASA connection – their "International Orange Kit".

Taking inspiration from NASA's orange space suit – officially called  the Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES) – was the result of a collaboration between the club, their jersey design partners, and MLS NEXT Pro.

"The first collaborator was NASA," said Emerson, who left his role with Huntsville to take the same job with fellow MLS NEXT Pro side Chattanooga FC shortly after this interview. "Fortunately, I've worked with NASA for the last 10-plus years on different projects in Huntsville, and so we were able to reach out to some of their people and say, 'hey, what's the Pantone for this orange?' They gave us a Pantone, and we worked with our partners at the kit manufacturer and said, 'what's the closest you have to this?' We got the color right, which was critical."

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"We made the trim really basic. There were not a lot of embellishments on there. It had the collar, which was black, and the sleeve cuffs, which were black. And that's because on the astronaut spacesuit, the collar's black, and that's why we went with black. We tried to recreate as much as possible," Emerson continued. "The other thing was that normally the MLS Next Pro patch on the kit is on the left shoulder, but that's where the American flag is... So fortunately, we reached out to the league and they were very helpful. They don't wanna do it all the time, but we have a rational reason, a storytelling reason to do this. So we flipped to the right, the MLS Next Pro patch, and put in the American flag on the left."

Much of this creativity was made possible by their partnership with Soccer.com as their primary kit supplier. Instead of working directly with adidas, a process that can limit their creative options and significantly increases production time, Huntsville work directly with the Hillsborough, North Carolina company to design their kits.

"It's about 100 days from when we place the order to when we get it. We knew we were working towards space night last July, so we could kind of work backwards. I think we came up with the concept probably November, December of '24," said Emerson. "We just literally designed it in house. We didn't have a third party designer. I mean, other than NASA, I guess. And they were a good consultant!"

The kits aren't the only space-inspired part of the Huntsville matchday experience. Games kick off with an ignition countdown, culminating in kickoff and a burst of smoke from a decommissioned J2X space rocket that sits at the top of the supporters' section.

"That's a beautiful piece of literally engineering, but also art," said Emerson, who worked out a deal with the city of Huntsville and NASA to relocate the rocket from storage to Joe Davis Stadium. "We got it rolled in. I literally had to take some of the permanent gates down just to get it in; it's that large. Before each kickoff in Nashville, because they're the music city, they used to have a guitar riff. Why don't we turn [the rocket] into the kickoff ritual? There's no other sporting venue in America that does what we do with the J2X rocket."

The reserve affiliate of Nashville SC, Huntsville are one of the few teams in MLS NEXT Pro to be linked to an MLS club but playing in a separate city. Huntsville have embraced the idea of being "Nashville's second team but Huntsville's first team", a theme that is reflected in the attendence numbers.

In 2025, they averaged just over 3,700 fans per game, one of the higher figures in MLS NEXT Pro. And with a team that made the playoffs for the first time as a club last year, interest in the team looks likely to continue when the 2026 season kicks off on Monday night.

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Huntsville plan to continue to lean into their identity and build a brand that reflects, not just the team on the field, but the identity of the city.

"What is the story tell angle each season? This year, NASA's about to launch Artemis 2 to go around the moon. It's going be the farthest humans have ever gone, even further than Apollo. Apollo landed, but this is just gonna loop around the moon and come back as a test flight," said Emerson. "So we've been thinking about what are some ways that we can really recognize that history's happening this year, and a lot of the history was designed in engineer to Huntsville."

"We're not even really a soccer match; we're an entertainment experience... So for us, how can we make our experiences as entertaining as possible?"