Coach Conor MacNeil was on a bit of a high after his Niagara-on-the-Lake Soccer Club Under-10 team participated in Club Roma’s annual TiAmo Festival Cup this past weekend.
They lost both games Sunday, 4-0 to a team from Paris, Ontario and 6-2 to the Maple Leaf Cavan Football Club from the Peterborough area. But the improvement MacNeil and fellow coaches Mike Pillitteri and Will Reid saw was enough to assure them that they are on the right track.
“Our kids just kept getting better,” MacNeil told The Local Monday afternoon. “Both teams we played were rep teams. They’ve been playing together for four or five years. I assume they are probably playing in the winter as well. Their chemistry is way better than ours, but technically, I thought our kids were right there.”
MacNeil’s U-10 team was pieced together this spring from the NOTL Soccer Club’s U-9/10 house league program.
“This is totally new for NOTL Soccer,” says club president Carrie Plaskett. “Conor was calling it a select team, because it’s very similar to what is done with hockey, a team built out of the house league. He was so enthusiastic about it. He wanted to have some elevated play for these U10s. It was presented to the board and everyone agreed it was a great idea.”
MacNeil gathered his fellow coaches and organized a series of tryouts in early May.
“We had no rep team for this age coming out of COVID,” MacNeil explained. “I had a great time coaching these kids in house league last year. It’s a really great group of kids, they’re passionate about soccer. The goal is to get them the opportunity to play some games against other clubs, to hopefully turn them into life-long fans and players of the game.”
MacNeil is a life-long soccer player himself. The professor with Niagara College’s Game Development program grew up playing soccer in NOTL and has fond memories of his father Patrick coaching him as a young player.
“He took us to tournaments in Erie, Pennsylvania,” he recalled, “Pittsburgh and Rochester too. I had a great time bonding with my fellow players on those trips. That really made me fall in love with the game.”
And he continues to play today. For the past ten years MacNeil has been a member of the NOTL Gunners, a men’s Over-35 team that plays in the Peninsula Veterans Soccer League (PVSL). Their home games are Friday evenings at Memorial Park on King Street.
The U-9/10 house league plays its games Tuesday evenings. MacNeil coaches one of the five teams that evening, then the members of his select team, both boys and girls, stick around for a practice right after. It gives MacNeil and the other coaches a chance to work on skills and position play.
“The teams we played Sunday had better positioning,” MacNeil admits. “But our team made some big jumps on positioning throughout the day. They were starting to realize that the stuff they get away with in house league was not working. They realized by the second game they had to get their passes together and work more as a team.”
From the club’s perspective, the new situation involved a bit of extra thought. Some creative field scheduling was required to ensure the select team could practice, and the players needed a second uniform other than their house league kit.
“There’s an extra cost for tournaments, and to pay for referees for exhibition games, too,” says Plaskett. “Conor found some sponsorship for the team, and the players did contribute some funds through an additional registration fee to help pay for it.”
Through his PVSL contacts MacNeil lined up an exhibition game against a team from Fort Erie a few weeks ago. NOTL lost 6-3 but it was an impressive start for a team that had only been together for a short time. The two games in the TiAmo Festival, hosted by Club Roma, were the next big test.
Goalkeeper Eli Pfeffer was the star in their first game against Paris. The nine-year-old’s fearless, strong play between the posts kept the game within reach for the NOTL selects, who weren’t able to get much past a strong Paris backfield.
“In the second game our wingers were picking up players way, way better,” MacNeil said. “And we had a couple of breakaways that we missed. We gave up early goals in both games by just being out of position. If we solve that in future games things will be different.”
Nathan Reid and Wyatt Neufeld scored the NOTL goals against Maple Leaf Cavan.
Up next for the U-10 selects is a rematch against that Fort Erie team, then an exhibition game against Club Roma. MacNeil is also trying to arrange a friendly match against Niagara Falls before they play in the A.C. Douglas Memorial Festival August 12 and 13. It’s one of Canada’s largest tournaments.
“Conor’s vision is that this will lead to a travel, or rep team for this group of kids next year,” says Plaskett. “It really looks like there will be enough interest at this age group so that this select team can turn into a true travel team next summer.”