The OGRCC Boys U-11 Thunder Blue team has reached the Connecticut Cup finals in a memorable season with 18-year veteran professional coach Jorge Acosta with the MKSE organization.
Acosta had previously taken the OGRCC boys -U-11 boys ’team to back-to-back CT Cup Championships. Acosta, a former United States National Team professional soccer player from 1992 to 1993, had inherited his current team this past fall from three different OGRCC boys teams.
After a regrouping fall season, the BU-11 Thunder Blue Team is finishing up its Spring season in the Connecticut Junior Soccer Association Southwest District — Division A in a leading position with Stamford United and Wilton Blue with two more games to play.
The team has so far gone 13-2-1, while also winning the Glastonbury Hartwell Spring Warmup Tournament – BU-11 Platinum Premier Division. The 22nd Annual tournament is the leading state-wide invitational tournament of the spring season, with over 200 teams, 3,000 players and 12,000 attendees.
The team won the top division beating the prominent premier clubs, Oakwood SC 4-0, CFC Wolves 1-0 and CFC North 3-0.
The U-11 year is considered to be the most competitive, largest and most exciting elimination tournament of youth soccer in Connecticut.
This year 56 teams throughout the state compete in six rounds of elimination. U-11 is by far the largest pool in the CJSA tournaments.
The OGRCC BU11 Thunder Blue will be playing the venerable West Hartford BU11 team Saturday at the Farmington Sports Arena in the championship round. This is after five weekly rounds of elimination games.
Thunder Blue beat Shelton travel 6-1 in the initial round, then beat Guilford 7-0 in round two and then beat Tolland 6-2. OGRCC then beat Weston Blue 5-0, and finally won 2-1 in an exciting Final Four game vs Farmington Indians.
This memorable year caps many years that these boys had played soccer in the Old Greenwich Riverside Community Center. Many of the players started playing at age five within the Recreational Soccer Program at OGRCC’s “Kiddy Kick,” followed by recreation soccer and travel soccer every year after that to this point.
Acosta is also the OGRCC Director of Recreation Soccer, so it’s also an emotional farewell to boys that he has coached since five-years-old. The Blue team at OGRCC Thunder is the most competitive team within the travel program’s roster and these kids have been playing year-round soccer since seven-years-old.
This is the last year of the OGRCC Travel Soccer Program and many of the players throughout the girls and boys four U-11 teams will continue next year in Greenwich United, a program run by Kurt Putnam, who is the Greenwich High School boys soccer head coach.
