Sharpshooting striker Reinaldo Abraham taking big strides towards pro soccer dreams

A huge team of 46 Ottawa athletes are set to compete at the St. John’s 2025 Canada Summer Games in Newfoundland. The Ottawa Sports Pages will be sending out a free daily email newsletter with recaps, previews and profiles throughout the Aug. 9-24 national youth multi-sport event.

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By Farrah Philpot

Ottawa’s Reinaldo Abraham is taking a big trip with Team Ontario to North America’s easternmost city for the St. John’s 2025 Canada Summer Games just a few months after making a big move to join Toronto FC Academy.

But these major mileposts are all part of a bigger journey for the Ottawa South United Force product – to become a professional soccer player.

“I’ve always wanted to join TFC and it’s super hard, especially in Canada, because there’s only three professional academies and every kid in the country’s trying to get in,” Abraham highlighted during an online call with the Ottawa Sports Pages from Toronto, where he moved with his father in advance of this soccer season.

Abraham said he’s enjoying the environment at TFC because everyone around him has the same goal.

“I’ve always said I wanted to be a pro, but I feel like I really started to take it seriously at like 11 or 12,” reflected Abraham, who’s increasingly continued to realize that that opportunity could become become a reality.

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Abraham’s talent was clear at a young age. After moving to Canada from Venezuela with his family at the age of four, he first signed up with the Nepean Hotspurs in Ottawa, but then joined Timbits soccer at OSU before entering the club’s pre-academy.

He played with older age groups for several years until the size discrepancy became too great in his early teenage years, although the achievement that undeniably illuminated his pro potential came as a younger U16-age player competing in the Ontario Player Development League’s under-17 division last season.

As a member of the OPDL Charity Shield-champion OSU Force, Abraham won the league’s scoring title by an astonishing 15-goal margin with his total of 38 tallies.

“What motivates me is scoring goals. I’m going to try and score all the goals I can,”Abraham underlined. “I’m not going to be selfish not passing the ball, but I’m just going to go and try to score as many goals as possible.”

Reinaldo Abraham. *Photo: Ontario Soccer*

For the Canada Games, Abraham is committed to being the top goal-scorer in the tournament.

“He wants to play in the big stages, he wants to be there and he’s successful in those moments,” Abraham’s former OSU coach Emilio Millan explained. “That’s something that you want to have to be a professional and to make that next step.”

While Abraham said that making Team Ontario is his biggest accomplishment to date, he’s particularly excited because it will provide a chance to reunite with a former OSU teammate.

“I’m most connected with Luca Ugarte because we were on the same team. He’s from Ottawa as well, we’re the only two kids from Ottawa,” noted Abraham, whose Ontario side will play pool games on Aug. 10 and 12 before the playoff round on Aug. 14 and 15.

The Ontario women’s Canada Games team, which will play on the second week of competition, features a pair of Ottawa players. Danica Menard and Fiona Cortes-Browne are both OSU products who have also made the move to Toronto to be part of the Canadian women’s team National Development Centre.

Cortes-Browne’s older sister Sofia was the goalkeeper for Canada Games-champion Team Ontario at the Niagara 2022 tournament, while Menard was a champion with an OSU squad that represented Canada at the 2024 Gatorade Global 5v5 Finals in London, U.K. Both have also won OPDL titles with OSU.