While making our regular rounds through social media we stumbled upon a bright and colorful shirt design by recent Business Spotlight participant Skadi Soccer. Of course, in an era of so many fun and imaginative soccer shirt designs we weren’t sure that it was… real. So we reached out, low and behold, the Rainbow Unicorns are in fact a real soccer club - and an absolute blast to be a part of! Anthony Melo answered the call to tell us more…

Who are Rainbow Unicorns and how did they get started? Where did the name come from?

The Rainbow Unicorns are a rec league team from Nashville, TN. Some of us had played in a men's league together and we really hated that macho, hyper-competitive environment (no shade to the guys we played alongside, y'all were great!), so we got the idea to include a bunch more of our friends and create our own co-ed team. It was during this discussion that our name was created, and the idea was really just to have something silly and bright, something that you couldn't take seriously. We knew we weren't going to take ourselves too seriously, so the name reflected that silliness that we wanted to bring to the field.

Rec soccer is fun for everyone - no need to take it too serious!

What league do you play in and do you have any plans to expand or grow the team? Or is it just for fun?

We currently play in Mid State Sports Leagues, which hosts many different recreation level sports. We don't really plan on expanding the team at all, this is a great thing we've got going with friends and that's what matters most.

Is the shirt design recently shared by Skadi something that's in the works? Had you considered making a few extra to see if they'd sell?

The shirt design from Skadi is legitimate, and really incredible. It's funny how that happened, because we took this idea of a team that didn't take itself seriously on the pitch and said "what if we projected that with an Instagram?" Well that made its way around some folks we knew from supporting Nashville SC, and I guess Antony saw it too. He knew some of us from when he came down to watch Nashville in USL, and he reached out and asked if we wanted to work on a kit together. At the time we were actually looking for new shirts, because the t-shirts we are currently using are starting to get a little funky, and he really knocked it out of the park. I'm thrilled with the end result, he's got such a wonderful eye for color and a forward thinking that lends itself well to designing kits. There are no current plans to sell to the public, but it's not something we've ruled out entirely.

Where can people follow your club and what are you guys up to next?

Y'all can follow us on Instagram at @rainbowunicorns615 and on Twitter at @615Rainbow for all of your low-effort memery and self-deprecating humor needs. Right now we're patiently waiting for conditions to improve in order to safely keep on getting beat up by better teams, and you can bet we'll do it with a smile