Footy threesome have high hopes
Though Father Bressani bailed out of the junior boys soccer playoffs early, there are three reasons to anticipate YRAA titles over the next three years.
Eagles coach Anthony Gorys has three national qualifiers suiting up for his squad: fraternal twins Michael and Luca Uccello as well as Lucas Puntillo.
The trio, who suit up for Kleinburg Nobleton Lions, spent the Canadian under-14 nationals in St. John’s, Newfoundland this year, before joining the student body of Bressani in September. One keeper, a striker and centre-midfielder who can jump up to strike when needed were definitely a welcomed arsenal for Gorys.
“We’ve always had a strong soccer background in the past number of years, so to have this type of talent come through still, is phenomenal,” he said.
Through the regular season, the squad went 4-0 with 20 goals scored, and keeper Michael Uccello only allowed one goal, something his source of inspiration, Gianluigi Buffon, would be pleased with.
“We won a bunch of our games, by a lot obviously, and we went to the semis for the school regional, and then we lost 2-1,” Michael said, adding high school soccer was organized differently from the Ontario Indoor Soccer League he’s used to.
“Challenges were being new to the school and it was hard to communicate with each other on the field and give direction.”
Still, brother Luca — who models his game after Zlatan Ibrahimovic — said the positives far outweighed the negatives.
“It was good, obviously because we’re new to the school and we’re playing with grade 10s,” he said. “We didn’t have much time to train, so we got better and better each game.
“Unfortunately we got beat out in the semis but overall it was a great season.”
That game was a 2-1 loss to Bill Crothers in the YRAA semi-finals, and Puntillo, whose favourite player is Lionel Messi, will have the Colts in his crosshairs for 2012.
“I think we just want to get past what we did this year because I think we could have potentially won basically everything,” he said. “We didn’t put as much effort as we could have.”
All three are planning on returning to the pitch for their grade 10 year, and will continue their yen for football in the winter.
As for Gorys, he couldn’t be happier to have three touchstones of soccer dominance pass through the Bressani halls during their high school careers.
“They are positive role models, they are very, very good kids, extremely talented and exactly the types of players we look for in the school,” he said. “It should be a good four years of soccer, guaranteed.”