KDVP High under-16 soccer team’s journey to success

JONATHAN TSHONA, ACTING HEAD OF SPORT

This soccer season has been one of the greatest football seasons King David Victory Park has ever experienced. High school soccer at the school is growing and will continue to do so. The highlight of the season was the under-16 boys’ team winning the Johannesburg Schoolboys Football League.

The road to the finals was not an easy one as the boys were faced with “big soccer schools” in their group. They lost to Hyde Park and Reddam Bedfordview in the opening group matches, but continued to work extra hard and even requested more training sessions!

Their hard work paid off when they beat Roosevelt High, Curro Aurora and King David Linksfield. They finished second in their group and secured a spot in the semi-finals, which they played against the winner of Group B, Edenvale, – at Edenvale High.

PHOTOGRAPH: ALEX KATTAN
YouthKDVPU16Soccer:

Back: Rui de Sousa (coach); Jonathan Tshona (acting head of sport); and Aryn Bloch. Middle: Justin Bolnick; Thomas Stenz; Njabulo Xaba (coach); Gabriel Milne; Carl Kotton; Benjamin Melamdowitz; Joshua Eidegger; Yigal Finkelstein; Luca Clark; Eytan Fainman; Jason Mervis; and Joshua Nossel. Front: Gavriel Nossel (captain); and Jess Rom (vice-captain).

The KDVP boys played extremely well and got a well-deserved 3-1 result, making a soccer league final for the first time in the school’s history.

Then it was match day, September 21, and the excitement was palpable. The bus trip to Reddam Bedfordview was tense.

In the first half, the game was evenly matched, with both teams attacking and defending well. The match was an end to end encounter and in the second half of extra time, Reddam scored the first goal of the match.

The discipline, dedication, passion and no giving up attitude from the King David boys was displayed when they responded by equalising. The match ended 1-1. But a draw wouldn’t do as this was a league final.

Penalties would decide the outcome and with both teams having missed one penalty each, it went to sudden death. The VP goalkeeper (Joshua Widegger) saved the first penalty of the sudden death round leaving room for Joshua Nossel to boldly bring the trophy to Victory Park.