On Saturday morning, as the Orange and Blue’s first-team players headed out to their practice field for final prep ahead of Sunday night’s home finale, one by one their pace got slower and they drifted closer to the other practice field.
Soon, they stopped and gazed on.
The FC Cincinnati Academy’s very first home match was already underway, and the Under-15s were hosting the Chicago Fire Academy.
As Head Coach Ron Jans watched with his hands on his hips, Justin Hoyte and assistant coach Ivar van Dinteren discussed the players and their spacing. In another group, Kendall Waston, Allan Cruz and Emmanuel Ledesma gathered together to watch.
It was a surreal moment for its symbolism.
Nearly every other weekend this year, the Academy players have watched the first team play. They’ve looked to the senior group as the long-term goal. That’s what they want their future to resemble.
But the roles changed Saturday, and instead, the first-team players were observing the players who could very well be FCC’s future.
It was a moment when the present and future collided.
“It was amazing and a great environment,” U-17 Head Coach Ricardo Páez said. “It’s the first time in three years that I’ve been involved in DA and we had first team players there. It’s extra motivation and hopefully we can see them again.”
For the U-15s, they beat Chicago 1-0 courtesy of a first half goal. After losing to the Fire last weekend in Bridgeview, Ill., the match was an important result to generate momentum and celebrate their first home game with three points.
“They take pride in being here on this field,” U-15 Head Coach Joshua Neff said. “They nicknamed this field the Lion’s Den. They take it seriously … It’s us against ourselves no matter who the opponent is. We always have to play better than we did last time. We did play better than we did last week.”
As for the U-17 team, they were unable to finish the day with two wins, falling to Chicago’s U-17s, 2-0.
“We’ve had pretty good results at the beginning of the season, but now we have to face Chicago twice and lost to them at home and away,” Páez said. “We have to keep working hard because we know this team is going to bring in many good results and we have good players. I’m optimistic about it, and we just need to give the boys more time.”
If this sort of special moment repeats itself – when the senior team watches the youth team, it’ll either be sooner or later. The Academy’s next home games in Milford are this Saturday, but the first team is set to travel to Washington D.C. that day. Non-traveling players will conduct a session at MHTC after the travel squad departs. After that, the next opportunity will be in the spring of 2020 once the Academy’s second half begins and the first team is back training.
The message was clear Saturday morning: while the present begins winding down, the future is very much just beginning.
