By Anil Jhalli
In the club’s last-ever shot at claiming a USL Super-Y League boys’ title, the Ottawa Fury FC U15 boys became the first male champions of the North America-wide league in 12 years of trying at December’s league finals in Florida.
“To be the first boys team to win it, it’s a pretty big deal and I’m proud to say I was part of that team,” says Fury co-captain Sam Laviolette, who remembers when the team could barely win a game when he first joined them four years ago. “We have come so far. This is right at the top of everything I have accomplished.”
Ottawa opened the Dec. 5-9 event with a 2-2 draw against a Michigan-based club and wound up beating those same rivals 3-1 in the championship game. In between were victories over teams from New Jersey and Atlanta and an extra-time win over New York in the semi-finals.
“I’ve coached some pretty great teams, and this team is right up there,” highlights coach Steve Hill, whose players earned three places on the tournament all-star team – Noah Campagna, Abdullah Juma, and Federico Leal. “This team brought a battling spirit with them and they just showed great mental toughness and resilience. They just kept battling back from any adversity that came their way. They would never be denied.”
At last season’s Super-Y Finals, the team went 2-1 in the preliminary round and missed the playoff round by tiebreaker.
“We had a really good team last year, it just didn’t work out for us,” signals co-captain Noah Stanford. “This year, we kept our heads up and just stayed positive because we knew we had a solid chance of winning it all. It was a really exciting moment for everyone when it was all over.”
The Fury won a girls’ Super-Y title in 2010, but boys’ teams had never won the big prize despite appearing in the past two finals.
Although several others had qualified, the U15 boys were the lone Fury team that competed in the finals. Since the club decided in the fall that it wouldn’t field the bulk of its youth teams next season, most groups that had played together in the Super-Y regular season during the summer elected not to attend the finals over three months later.
Next season, the Fury senior and junior men’s academy teams will play against senior-age players in the Quebec first league (which includes FC Gatineau) and reserve division respectively. The club has yet to announce where their girls’ academy team will play next year, which will now be the Fury’s lone female team after it axed its USL W-League franchise.
“With the recent changes to our academy system, it was important for us to expose our players to the best possible competition,” Fury technical director Phillip Dos Santos said in a media release. “Although it will be challenging for the boys we believe these are the type of environments that will produce better players.”