By Ottawa Sports Pages, for OSU Force Academy
The Ottawa South United Force 2012-born boys were headed to penalty-kicks to decide the championship game of the Disney Junior Showcase U13 boys’ event.
As the referees whistled and called the players forward, the Force supporters who’d made the trip to Orlando chanted “OSU! OSU!”, and then the Boynton FC fans from the tournament’s home state of Florida responded with “USA! USA!”
“I think that it kind of added a bit of fuel into the fire,” reflects OSU coach Juan Monge, noting his team wanted to leave a positive image of Canadians on and off the pitch during their trip to the early-December event.
“A lot of the boys were kind of feeling like, ‘Oh, shoot. We’re representing not only the club, but we’re here representing a whole country.’ It was very special.”
The trip to the renowned competition at the ESPN Wide World of Sports served as a final chapter of sorts for Monge’s group as they graduated from the Force Junior Academy into OSU’s Ontario Player Development League program.
The Disney Cup provided a little boost to the group’s offseason training, along with exposure to top competition as they prepare for their first season of full-field 11v11 play. In advance, the club scheduled several fall friendlies with older squads and entered multiple tournaments in older age divisions.
Monge also focused on developing the players’ technical abilities to play through pressure, their tactical abilities to adapt to opponents, and to foster a resilient, winning mentality, which proved particularly criticial when matched up against southern sides in midseason form.
The five opponents the Force took on at Disney were easily among the best challengers they’ve faced to date, signals Monge.
The Force nonetheless emerged with three close wins in pool play, and though their legs were getting heavy come their fourth game in two days in the semi-final, OSU prevailed 3-1 over Orlando’s IdeaSport – an MLS NEXT Academy program featuring players from Central and South America on top of the U.S.
In the championship game the next morning, the tournament’s lone Canadian entry held a 1-0 lead for most of the game until Boynton FC levelled the score in the final minutes.
“What really impressed me was that I never saw a boy just dropping on the floor being upset,” Monge recounts. “It was just like, ‘Alright, let’s get the ball back out and get back at it.'”
The match wound up going to a decisive penalty-kicks shootout, which was a skill the team practiced at the end of most of their sessions.
“People say PKs is all about luck, but you know, it also helps that we have probably the best goalkeeper in Ontario,” smiles Monge, referencing young Hezekia Rajakoba.
“When we went into the huddle, even before I started speaking, one of the kids on the team said, ‘Guys, do your job, put in the back of the net, and Hezekia is gonna save one or two, and we’ll win this.’
“To see that maturity at 11 or 12 years old, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really cool.’ This is why we’re training. This is why we do this. For me, it wasn’t really about winning, it was all about seeing that team spirit and that resilience.”
Rajakoba did indeed deliver a great diving stop to block a solid first attempt right near the goal post, and then made a beauty diving save to the other side on the second shot to give the Force the advantage they needed in a 4-3 shootout win.
That was just the latest standout penalty-kick performance for an OSU keeper this season, coming on the heels of Aidan De Hartog’s back-to-back-to-back provincial and national title triumphs with older Force squads.
Read More: De Hartog does it again: National-champion OSU goalkeeper wins 2 OPDL titles by shootout in 1 day
Rajakoba’s older brother Isaia was a key contributor to the Force national-champion squad, and Monge wasn’t at all surprised to see Hezekia following in the footsteps of both his sibling and De Hartog, who he’d also coached when he was younger.
“For these young ones to see the older ones having success, it just lights that fire in their belly,” highlights Monge, noting that OSU players of different ages get to know each other since they often train together in the Academy setting.
“And it shows them that if they follow the same kind of routine that they can carry on and be successful too.”
Although Monge’s team did celebrate in the best way possible by going to a theme park after their championship win, Disney was a trip of a lifetime for more reasons than Mickey and Minnie.
“It just shows players the top-notch facilities, the high level of competition, and it also shows how well our kids can perform against the best teams in the U.S.,” explains Monge, a past Costa Rica youth national team player who played NCAA soccer and studied sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University on scholarship, before following his varsity soccer-playing wife back to her home in Halifax, and ultimately settling in Ottawa to raise their family.
Thanks to the reputation and relationships the club has built over many years, OSU teams from numerous age groups have been invited to exclusive Disney showcase events.
“I think that that’s one of the keys why our teams are so successful in Ontario and at the Canadian level – you see it with the 2009 boys winning it all this season – it’s just the experiences that the club provides the kids in different times of their lives,” Monge continues.
“From Disney to OPDL, from OPDL to provincial team, from provincial team to national team, and on to scholarships for school or to professional teams – it just keeps preparing them for the next level, and it gives them all the values that you get from a team sport like soccer on the way.”
Monge believes that his champion group is only going to get stronger and stronger as they progress on to higher levels in their careers, and he couldn’t have pictured a better way to finish his two seasons working with the squad.
The moment after they won the shootout was particularly special since the players all ran right over to the stands where their families’ “OSU!” chants had evolved into pure screams.
“That was so awesome,” Monge smiles. “It was parents being proud of the boys, and the players saying ‘thank you, Mom and Dad,’ and everyone celebrating all together.
“It showed that it was like a whole big family, and it just really summed up the whole trip and the whole two years with the boys. I think that this was the perfect way to finish up their journey in the U12 Junior Academy, and transition to big-boy soccer. It was really cool.”
Learn more about Ottawa South United Soccer Club at osu.ca.
