By Dan Plouffe
Their opponents even had “snow” in their names, but when the snowflakes flew and the wind gusted, it was the West Ottawa Warriors who blew away Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Côte-des-Neiges 10-0 in their Quebec LS Pro league debut on April 18 at Wesley Clover Parks.
“We really wanted to just make a statement to the league and to everyone in Ottawa that we’re here to compete,” highlights West Ottawa captain Yusuf Osman, also a senior centre midfielder at Carleton University who’s part of a major injection of Ravens flavour to the Warriors’ team.
“We’re not just some local Ottawa team,” he adds. “We can make it past that, and we can go all the way. We have the Cup coming up, so that’s exciting too. We have big goals and big ambitions.”
The Warriors are one of six expansion teams to join the Quebec semi-pro circuit this season, and thus they’ve been slotted in at the bottom rung of the ladder in Ligue 3.
Coach Stephen O’Kane is not expecting double-digit goal totals in every match, but his group is already keenly looking forward to Cup play when they’ll match up with Ligue 1 and 2 teams, beginning with their regional pool alongside Ottawa South United, AS Gatineau and FC Gatineau.
“Without putting pressure on myself, I want to win it,” O’Kane says of his team’s objectives. “I want to get promoted and jump up the levels as best we can.”
West Ottawa’s offensive firepower was on full display in a Sunday afternoon contest with their NDG-CDN challengers from Montreal. Kevin Kaba, Georges Musitu and Caden Tomy each scored two goals, with the other markers going to Cameron Shaw, Tchimpaka Alix Basa, Damiano Totten and Jason Hartill, who also plays with Atlético Ottawa.
“I can’t be unhappy about a 10-0 win,” smiles O’Kane. “It was fantastic. Everything that we trained upon this week, the boys executed, and that’s always nice as a coach to see that.”
In 2023, O’Kane led a Warriors men’s team to a Challenge Trophy Canadian men’s amateur soccer championship, and a solid share of those team members of have returned with this new squad that isn’t exactly brand new.
“There’s continuity and familiarity with me and them, and then that allows those guys to sort of be the core that sets the tone for us,” O’Kane indicates. “And moving forward, we’re hoping to accomplish similar things with this group.”
Read More: West Ottawa Warriors win national men’s amateur soccer title
The Warriors women are newbies to the Quebec LS Pro scene this season, but they have an exceptional piece of history to draw upon as well. The last time West Ottawa competed in a similar league was in 2017 when current Ottawa Rapid FC technical director Kristina Kiss led an Ontario League1 entry featuring the likes of Olympic champion Vanessa Gilles, who made her last stop with an amateur team at West Ottawa before launching her pro career.
“There were a lot of good players on that team whose careers have exploded since then,” signals Warriors women’s coach Lucas Blain. “For sure we want our players to use that as inspiration, but we also really want to try to trailblaze a little bit and start our own path.”
A key part of the new path was choosing the Quebec league over Ontario, primarily because most road games will be closer in the Montreal area than Toronto. That makes participation more affordable, and the players who are primarily university/college age don’t have to give up their full weekend to travel, so work and school commitments can fit in better, O’Kane explains.
“At some clubs, when you get to that older age group where you’re in Grade 12 or 11, there’s not really a next step afterwards,” adds Blain, whose lineup includes numerous starters for university teams. “This is hopefully starting to show the kids, who come to watch the games, that they have something to look up and say I could still try to push on.”
Ottawa South United returns to Ligue 1 in search of more trophies
OSU is now six years deep in its foray into the Quebec league system. After several of its youth teams dominated the upper age groups of the Ontario Player Development League, OSU has doubled down on the Quebec route in recent years. When U19 men’s and U21 women’s Quebec espoir leagues were introduced, the OSU Force elected to no longer enter U17 OPDL teams and instead try the older age groups.
OSU LS Pro program lead Vladan Vrsecky notes that the different options for high-level play ensures that their players can match up with the appropriate level of competition.
“This league is very competitive,” he highlights. “The challenge for (past youth champion players) is to find consistency, because if, in the past, you played in the league where you were dominating and it wasn’t as competitive, then the players are not used to be consistent over the whole season.
“And if you want to win this league, you really need to be in top form weekend by weekend.”
Last season, OSU captured the Quebec women’s U21 and men’s U19 espoir championships, and went 6-9-5 in men’s Ligue 1 and 7-6-3 in women’s.
The OSU men are off to a solid start in their new campaign. Abdulazeez Hammood Lazam scored a second-half hat trick as the Force downed CS Mont-Royal Outremont 4-1 on Sunday evening.
The Force earlier beat AS Laval 3-0 in their home opener on April 11 at George Nelms Sports Park, with Lazam contributing a brace. Lazam also scored in OSU’s season-opening 3-1 defeat at Royal Beauport, which gives him six goals in three matches and twice as many goals as anyone else atop the league scoring chart.
“There is a lot of talent,” highlights Vrsecky, happy to have improved depth on his men’s squad even if it creates a bit of a problem for him as a coach.
“It will be nice fight between them as a competition to see who will deserve more minutes,” he indicates. “I believe that we will have a lot of game-changers coming from the bench who will have an impact on the final result.”
In the U19 men’s league, OSU has won and lost by shutout so far, while the Force U21 women have a loss and a draw.
The OSU women failed to score in both of their road games in 2-0 and 1-0 defeats to Royal Beauport and AS Chaudière-Ouest, but carried on the happy home side vibes with a 2-0 victory over Lakeshore for their home opener on April 12. Emily Copeland and Mia Ugarte, who appeared for Rapid last season, scored for OSU, while Charlotte Murray-Martin recorded the clean sheet. Former Ravens coach Dom Oliveri is the women’s team’s freshly-appointed coach.
The arrival of the Northern Super League last season opened up opportunities for a number of OSU’s players to train with and even get into games with Rapid FC.
“It’s amazing. It’s very nice to see that that opportunity is open for them and hopefully there will be more and more girls stepping into this path,” Vrsecky says of the link to the Rapid, even if it can make it a little tougher to determine which players will be able to play for OSU at a given time. “Our main purpose is to move these players on to the professional level or to university level.
“Our success is not always a measurement of being first, second or third, but it’s also how many players we can move on to the next level. Of course, we want to win. And ideally, we are successful in both winning and moving players on.”
In the Warriors women’s opening match of LS Pro Ligue 3 play, Kim O’Rourke scored West Ottawa’s lone goal in a 1-1 draw at Victoriaville on April 12. They’ll visit Granby on April 26 and then return to Beckwith Park for their home opener on May 2 at 4 p.m. against Sherbrooke.
Algonquin College will serve as the Warriors’ usual site for home games in the summer – familiar grounds for both O’Kane and Oliveri as they used to lead the Ottawa Fury men’s and women’s North American semi-pro teams respectively.
The Warriors men drew a nice crowd numbering in the hundreds for their debut despite the unpleasant weather for spectators, many of whom huddled under blankets in the stands.
“Man, compared to yesterday when it felt like summer, today we get snow,” shrugs Osman, flanked by many young West Ottawa youth players/fans. “But it didn’t stop people from coming out. It was amazing. We had the canteen and everything. It was really nice and we were really happy to have so many people come out and support us and be part of this first step in a long journey.”