By Keiran Gorsky
Ottawa TFC produced two club firsts at the 2025 Ontario Player Development League Charity Shield finals – its first boys’ OPDL title and its first pair of OPDL championships in a single season – and there was no better way for the tight-knit club to experience those historic moments than together.
Schedulers for the 2025 Gary Miller Charity Shield finals kindly placed the visiting Ottawa TFC under-15 boys’ and girls’ games in back-to-back slots on Oct. 25 in Vaughan. Cheers echoed at the Zanchin Automotive Soccer Centre from the OTFC counterparts as each team pulled off tense triumphs to become Ontario’s only club to win multiple provincial playoff crowns this season.
“We try to build good people,” underlined U15 boys’ head coach Cian Lynch, who’s quickly come to appreciate the strong club-wide culture in his second season at Ottawa TFC. “Most of the time, the soccer follows.”
U15 girls’ head coach Jordan Lundin grew up playing for Ottawa TFC’s root clubs and has felt a special unity as she’s progressed up the ranks.
“We have little kids coming out to watch people they’ve never met before,” highlighted Lundin. “We have coaches who will come and help another coach if they’re sick, or need to go away for [any] reason.”
Ottawa TFC is of course recognized for the latter three letters in its name, hitching it to the biggest academy in the country at Toronto Football Club. Even so, they maintain, the Ottawa club never feels too big for its own cleated boots.
Developing talent from within, instead of aggressively recruiting from elsewhere, is key for the east/central club. Process is layered upon process – tactics and collaborative mentality are instilled at lower age brackets.
For Lundin and Lynch, they feel that the critical component of the club’s success is the closeness and connections between all Ottawa TFC members.
Camaraderie was top of mind for the hero of the OTFC girls’ comeback victory over Oakville, Lily Gauthier.
“All of these girls, it was just such a joy to play with them,” smiled the player-of-the-match in a post-game interview with Ontario Soccer.
Oakville scored on a long shot early in the second half, but Gauthier levelled the score after Ottawa TFC was awarded a penalty kick for a hand ball 10 minutes later.
Then with under 10 minutes to play, Gauthier bagged her brace off a rebound from a Stella Vickers shot to finish the 2-1 win.
“I feel amazing. It was just such a crazy experience,” Gauthier added. “This is honestly like a dream come true.”
The championship was Lundin’s first provincial crown as a head coach. On her bench were a pair of her mentors – Raz El-Asmar, who coached her to a 2013 OYSL east division title when she was a U17 player, and Pavel Cancura, who was head coach when OTFC won its first OPDL league title in 2021, again in the U17 girls’ division.
Lundin had to draw on all the lessons she’d learned early in the OPDL premier division season. Her team dropped three of their four opening matches in early August, all by excruciatingly slim 2-1 margins. It was something of a gut punch for a squad with every right to title ambitions after concluding the first portion of its season 8-1-1 in east division play.
Lundin proceeded to pose her players the ultimate question: Did they really, genuinely want to go all the way? The answer was a resounding ‘Yes!’
“And I told them, ‘You know, what I need from you guys is to believe in yourselves, believe in each other and believe in me,’” Lundin recounted. “‘I will do everything possible to help get you there, as long as you give me those three things.’”
They promptly responded with a 4-1 thumping of their local rivals from Ottawa South United on home turf. Rejuvenated, the girls didn’t lose again in their final seven contests. That win over OSU not only turned the tide, but proved critical for OTFC to earn the final playoff position by one point.
The reds handled Rush Canada 4-2 in the semi-final round, where they’d faltered the previous season. By the time they reached the finals, the intimidating lustre of must-win matches had faded – what was one more?
It was similar story for Ottawa TFC’s U15 boys. Although they won’t give them an inch on the field, the OTFC boys also have to give kudos to OSU – which captured a Charity Shield title of its own in the U16 boys’ competition – for preparing for them for the championship stage.
On multiple occasions earlier this season, the OTFC boys experienced all the emotions and excitement of big-game showdowns with OSU, as fans filled Millennium Park for the marquee matchup in U15 youth soccer.
Ottawa TFC held off OSU for a hard-fought 1-0 victory in their first meeting, pulled off a great escape with two late goals for a 2-1 triumph in the rematch, and then earned a ticket to the Charity Shield with a 2-0 road win in the playoff semi-finals on OSU turf.
Awaiting them in the final was a vaunted opponent in Woodbridge, which had lost just once in its 23 earlier OPDL contests. Ottawa TFC found itself in a hole when Woodbridge scored a dozen minutes short of full time, but once again came through in the clutch. Staring squarely at defeat into the final minute of added time, Edward Rizk scored with a perfectly placed header off a long-range cross from Sebastian Huerta-Flores.
A penalty kicks shootout, with the championship on the line, was no problem for the pressure-immune Ottawans. Isaac Gallard, Antoine Koh and Theodore Stevenson converted their kicks, and goalkeeper Eric Frederico proved particularly numb to the stress of the situation.
After turning back three consecutive spot kicks with diving saves, including the one that clinched it, Frederico kept an unflinching stone face as his teammates proceeded to mob him.
After the match, Lynch texted Frederico a hearty congratulations.
“Last time I checked, coach, that’s part of my job description,” came the reply from Frederico, the team’s captain.
Irish coach grows fond of Canadian football
Lynch feels his own job description as a coach goes far beyond that of a tactician or field marshal. It was a role he hadn’t exactly envisioned until recently, and he certainly hadn’t anticipated his coaching career would begin to blossom in Ottawa.
Lynch didn’t expect to return to Canada after signing a professional contract in 2023 with Finn Harps FC in his native Ireland. But the former Cape Breton University Caper had his best-laid plans thrown into flux by an ill-timed injury with his new club. Worse than the injury itself – though a torn meniscus was plenty unpleasant – Lynch was taken aback by the sheer fickleness of managers.
“When you were playing well, he was your best friend,” Lynch recalls. “Then, the second you were unavailable, you were kind of cast to the shadows and forgotten about.”
Lynch found himself out of rhythm and out of love with the game he was supposed to love more than anything.
For a time, falling back on his business degree seemed the safer bet. The longer he was away from the pitch, the more horror tales he heard about utterly unempathetic bench bosses.
“Stories I heard of bad coaching kind of reignited a fire in me,” Lynch recounts.
If he wanted it done kindly, he realized, he would have to do it himself. Work visa in hand, Lynch left an overcrowded academy system in Ireland and accepted a coaching position at Ottawa TFC last year.
There, he found friendships and a solid foundation built by leaders like Brogan Engbers and Kousha Aminian. That pair had been the U15 boys’ lead coaches in recent seasons and helped elevate OTFC’s boys’ program, which had come close to clinching championships before ultimately falling short the past two seasons.
Lynch didn’t arrive intent on reinventing the wheel and implementing some sprawling tactical system with overlapping fullbacks. He finds that kind of approach tends to create more confusion than cohesion at youth levels.
“I think people often forget about the context that you’re in,” Lynch laughed. “They try to turn a U15 team into Pep Guardiola’s Man City.”
Instead, Lynch’s focus centred around interpersonal relationships. His time at OTFC has been a slow practice in understanding a range of personalities. It takes a certain compassion to know what makes players click when motivation levels risk cratering on five-hour road trips.
“Some player needs a kick up the behind to get them going and some players need an arm around the shoulder,” Lynch signals. “I think getting that understanding for each player and what motivates them on their own individual level is kind of what kept us together this year.”
OSU Force U16 boys back on top
It was a championship season once again in 2025 for the OSU Force U16 boys as they won a provincial crown for the third year in a row with a 2-0 victory over Pickering on Oct. 26.
The group had previously gone undefeated to top the OPDL in 2023, they won a national title at the inaugural Canadian Player Development Program Championships in 2024, and they also celebrated a Charity Shield win in penalty kicks last season.
“This team has a lot of experience in these kinds of games,” coach Mohandi Mulay told Ontario Soccer. “We just wanted them to play, to enjoy, and to showcase themselves.”
David Amot sprung Gabriel Elayouti on a break for OSU’s first goal in the 20th minute, and then Amot received a similar feed himself for the Force’s second goal just four minutes later.
OSU’s defence locked down in the second half and kept Pickering largely at bay as Eliot Chan earned the clean sheet.
“We came here to compete, to make OSU and our city proud,” added Mulay, who also coached the Force U14 boys to an OPDL league title several weeks earlier.
Read More: Ottawa South United Force U14 boys finally celebrate title of ‘campeónes’
The Gary Miller Charity Shield, which was named after one of the architects of the OPDL after he passed away in 2020, raises money from admissions and auctions at the playoff finals. Half of the proceeds were given to Toronto’s SickKids hospital, while each champion team also gets to pick an Ontario charity to support with a share of the funds.
Amot, who won the league scoring title by two goals over teammate Ali Nazari with 21 in total, shared with Ontario Soccer that the players enjoyed the opportunity to give back to the community.
“That’s where you started,” said Amot, who gave credit to his teammates and coaches for making his player-of-the-match performance possible. “It’s great to give thanks to where you came from.”
Ottawa clubs have a solid streak of success going at the OPDL playoff championships. Last season, OSU was the dominant club at the Charity Shield finals, winning half of the eight available prizes.
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