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By Dan Plouffe
Of the four titles the Ottawa South United Force captured on Ontario Player Development Charity Shield playoff championship weekend Oct. 26-27 in Vaughan, the Force U16 girls were spared much of the stress the other squads.
They still had to endure a bit of uneasiness as they went fairly deep into a contest they’d utterly dominated tied 0-0, but their controlling play and the fact that they didn’t need a penalty-kicks shootout like the other three champion OSU sides made their 2-0 victory over Pickering considerably more decisive.
“Before the game, I could sense the mindset was that they were going to win this game. They seemed very confident,” recalled OSU coach David Fox. “I’m just so proud of them. They’ve been a very high-performing team this year. The way they play is dominant, and that’s been week in, week out, for the whole season. They deserved it, for sure. I was really, really happy for them.”
The Force U16 girls gave their coach a bit of a breather after he’d endured an absurdly long deciding penalty-kicks shootout en route to a title a day earlier with his OSU U17 girls.
Six Force U16 players also lived through the drama of that contest as members of the older squad as well, as Naomi Lofthouse, Mia Ugarte, Juliana Zappavigna, Cindy Yang, Felicia Hanisch and Charlotte Murray-Martin all celebrated Charity Shield crowns on back-to-back days.
“It’s quite remarkable, really, for those players,” Fox highlighted. “But you know, this is what we have to do. We have to make sure that our best players are being challenged appropriately all the time.”
Pickering finished with just one shot and none on target in the match, while OSU had 19 shots with 13 on net.
Despite the clear tilt, the game remained stubbornly scoreless before Yang stepped up to make the difference. In the 62nd minute, the attacking midfielder found a small opening in traffic and lofted home a shot from distance. She then seized an opportunity hardly a minute later by sneaking in her second left-footed goal in a row from the side of the box.
“It feels great to finish off our season strong,” Yang said post-game on Ontario Soccer’s live webcast. “We’ve been working together so long this group, so it feels great.”
Yang, who recently committed to play NCAA soccer at Yale University, was the team’s top scorer throughout the season, and second overall in the league with 23 goals.
“It’s been a really big couple of months for her,” Fox noted. “She’s technically one of the best players we’ve worked with. She can play with both feet. She’s a super talented player, and one of the most hard-working kids that you’ll meet. She’s relentless, and she’s deserving of all the success.”
Despite clearly demonstrating their superiority in the postseason final, it was OSU’s opponents who were crowned league champions earlier thanks to their record of eight wins and one tie.
OSU posted seven straight wins to open play in the premiere division, but finished their campaign with a pair of frustrating losses – 1-0 to Hamilton United Elite at home and 2-1 on the road in Pickering.
Fox, whose team outscored adversaries by a combined total of 24-9 in nine premier games, said their opponents sat back defensively in both those matches while hoping to catch OSU with counterattacks, and his squad just couldn’t put one in.
“We were very, very unfortunate not to win the league. We’ve been the best team for sure, across the season. But obviously you have to go out and win those games,” he added, while noting that OSU squads won 82% of their OPDL games across the U14 through U17 divisions this season. “That’s obviously positive for the club, but it also presents a challenge that when these more difficult games come, we don’t play these games often enough.
“That’s one of our challenges moving forward – to continue to try to find difficult situations for our players.”
The Force wound up avenging both defeats in the playoffs. They went on the road to Hamilton for the semi-final and earned a 3-1 victory, and then laid down their crowning performance in the championship game.
“The last two weekends have been really, really big for the team, to kind of right that wrong,” Fox signalled. “And I think all of what we had to work through is character-building in the end.”
OSU makes itself at home in Vaughan for Charity Shield finals
On top of the four victories that gave OSU half of all the available Charity Shield crowns across the U14 through U17 boys’ and girls’ divisions, the Force had one runner-up performance as well.
The league leading scorer by a margin of 15 goals, Zeina Zibara scored twice in the final, but the Force U14 girls fell one goal short to Brampton in a 3-2 defeat.
“Certainly the top two teams in the province, comfortably, were playing in the final, which is good,” indicated Fox, who said Brampton was full credit for the win. “In a game like that, little moments may make a big difference. We fell behind, and we were chasing the game, but what I was most proud of is the girls never stopped fighting.”
The Force equalized twice in the match and were “unfortunate” not to tie it again, the coach added.
“But that’s playing in a final,” he noted. “For them to experience that is tough, but it’s also a part of sports, and probably a lesson learned that can benefit them moving forward, to drive them forward. They’re winning so often, it’s sometimes good to have a reminder that those things aren’t guaranteed.”
Unbeaten with 16 wins and a tie, OSU had earlier won the OPDL U14 girls’ east division to qualify for next summer’s nationals, as did the Force U14 boys, who lost in their playoff semi-final. That was the same fate as endured by OSU’s U15 girls, who’d won the OPDL Cup earlier this season.
OSU, which qualified all seven of its entries for the four-team playoffs, also earned Charity Shield titles in the U15 and U17 boys’ divisions.
Read More: De Hartog does it again: National-champion OSU goalkeeper wins 2 OPDL titles in one day in shootouts
“Obviously, over a number of years, we’ve been highly successful, but this is something different,” highlighted Fox, OSU’s high-performance technical lead. “It’s unusual to have that many teams, and even maybe a little bit surprising, but at the same time, it’s something that we’re working towards all the time. It’s kind of the ambition that we set ourselves at the start of the season, for all of our teams to be completely at that top end.
“It’s the culture in the club, and undoubtedly, the success of years gone by helped to create and drive the culture that we have in the club, and the expectation that the players and coaches put on themselves. If you don’t set high standards, then don’t be surprised if people don’t reach them.”
Ottawa teams have long lamented that even when they win the regular season title, they have to play championship games on the road at the Ontario Soccer Centre in Vaughan, which acts as a supposed neutral site venue, but is most often a short drive away for their GTA opponents.
OSU found a partial solution to the problem this year, however – qualify five teams for the finals so that players and parents on other teams will be around to cheer the other squads on.
“Usually we’re the away team when we play a final in Toronto with a big crowd of locals, so it was nice to have that,” Fox smiled. “It was a unique experience, away in Toronto, to have that many teams in one place and be able to have that support.”