Eye on the Academy- The Alums

By Pat Eyler

RSL's academy has 40 alumni playing at various levels of college soccer this year.  I’m not even going to try to track all of them, but there are some that really seem to be doing well and I think those are worth focusing on. Lets start with a non-field player:  Matt Bersano, GK, Oregon State University: 12 games, 12 starts, 12 goals allowed, 5 clean sheets, 51 saves - those are just crazy numbers, a 1.0 GAA and 4.25 saves/game. RSL seems to have a real gift when it comes to keepers.

I think there are eight players that deserve some attention and five of those are freshmen.  Even with a defender in their midst, they have accounted for 17 goals and 25 assists so far this season while playing for pretty good teams. In fact, I’m going to point out Eti Tavares as well. Based on his production, could he could stand to play against higher level opponents.

Player (Yr Pos Games/Starts)	School	Goals	Assists
Jordan Allen (Fr F/D 13/13)	Virginia	2	4
Andrew Brody (Fr M 13/13)	Louisville	2	8
Ive Burnett (Fr D 13/13)	South Carolina	1
David Flores (Jr M 5/0)	Loyola Marymount	1
Phanuel Kavita (Jr D 14/14)	Clemson
Riggs Lennon (Fr F 13/6)	Virginia	4	1
Coco Navarro (Fr F 13/13)	Marquette	2	5
Ricardo Velazco (So M/F 13/13)	Louisville	5	7
	Total	17	25
Eti Tavares (So F 20/20)	Arizona Western	5	11

The 5 freshman all show up in Top Drawer Soccer’s midseason ranking the top 100 freshmen in college soccer: Jordan Allen (#3), Andrew Brody (#8), Coco Navarro (#31), Riggs Lennon (#37), and Ive Burnett (#97).

Several of these players have put in reserve stints for RSL and impressed there.  Some have seen Junior National Team minutes as well. I wouldn't mind seeing some of these guys playing for an RSL run PDL team during their college summers, and someday maybe wearing the jersey of the full team.  I wonder what their college coaches would think of them getting more of the RSL family grooming that helped them hone their games thus far.