RAJARI ROLLINS (left) booting home the second goal for Milton Lynch in spite of a valiant effort ST LEONARD’S BOYS’ Under-19 football team have been invited to meet scouts in the United Sates in August.
St Leonard’s, who have dominated secondary school competition over the years, were contacted by Justin Reid of Reid Sports and Entertainment, the company hosting the inaugural International Champions Friendlies (ICF).
Championship international schools and national teams from the Caribbean have been invited to Washington DC to compete against the champions of the US domestic leagues. These include the US Developmental Academy and the Elite Club National League. The tournament takes place from August 5 to 12.
Reid said the tournament will provide competitive pre-season matches for boys and girls of high school age and is a cultural and educational tour as well.
“A lot of countries like Barbados are known for cricket and not for soccer and many of the soccer players from the Caribbean come from Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, St Vincent and Haiti. We felt it was time to invite Barbados,” he said.
Opportunity
“This is a great opportunity for the St Leonard’s Boys to showcase their talent in front of college coache. So far, we have confirmed coaches from the Washington Adventist University and Howard University.”
The American-born Reid is of Trinidadian parentage but his grandfather is Barbadian.
“I’ve only been to Barbados once and that was in 2015 when I attended Soccer EX,” he said. “I browsed the Internet for the best teams in Barbados and I found St Leonard’s Boys. Late last year, I reached out to the principal and then I spoke to the football coach Fabian Massiah and I told him about the friendly matches.”
Massiah has been at St Leonard’s Boys for 15 years and he has been coaching for the last ten.
He said that the current team is made up of players who have moved from the junior league championships and some are on the junior national team as well. Among them are Thierry Gale, Niall Reid-Stephen and Jaiden Miller.
“We have one or two boys who are capable of acquiring scholarships because they have done the SATs,” he said.
St Leonard’s Boys principal Joseph Maynard welcomed the news. He said students had been excelling in both athletics and sports and the school continued to do its best to assist the boys.
“We need to give young people a chance. Our boys genuinely want to be, in my view, good citizens; to do that they need a chance. I don’t think sometimes that happens. So we need the public’s support,” he said.
To offset expenses, the school will be hosting a fund-raising dinner at the school on June 8. (PR)
JUSTIN REID (GP)
to block by Kanelo Lorde of St Christopher. (Picture by Kenmore Bynoe.)
