The Real Salt Lake-Arizona U-18 Academy team has tasted success as the 2013 USSDA National Champions. They also felt the pain of losing in the championship match in 2014. With those tastes of victory and defeat still fresh on their minds, the players who made up those U-16 teams in 2013 and 2014 will now make another run at the championship with a quarterfinal match on Tuesday against Shattuck-St. Mary’s.
RSL-AZ Technical Director Martin Vasquez has asked his players how it felt to lift the trophy as national champions just two years ago and was overwhelmed by the passion in their faces when describing that feeling.
“It’s the best feeling in the world,” Vasquez smiled. “They want to get there. That feeling – that hunger – it’s within and they want to get there.”
The U-18s have rolled through the 2014-15 season with a 32-3-4 record, then rolled to three convincing wins in the national tournament Group Stage last month. Along the way, the Arizona-based RSL Academy team outscored the opposition 161-33.
Now with a berth in the national finals in Carson, Calif., on the line, the team looks to continue its dominating season on Tuesday at the club’s Casa Grande, Ariz., home field. They’ve done it not only with outstanding individual players, but by getting those players to believe in one another and play under the RSL banner.
“They own it. They walk it. They talk it. They support it. They embrace it. And they believe in it,” Vasquez said of the team’s belief in the ‘RSL way.’ “It’s been a hell of a year for this group of guys.”
Tuesday’s match kicks off at 10:30 a.m. MT.
