East County soccer players rise to a new challenge

From the moment Tomas Alvarez stepped on the pitch, he knew it was a different game.

Alvarez, a 16-year old junior at Parrish Community High who hails from Colombia, is one of the top soccer players in the region. At 6-foot, 150 pounds, he is a gifted midfielder, technically advanced with a keen eye for reading the field. 

As a sophomore, Alvarez was named the Class 5A District Player of the Year, leading Parrish to a district championship win over Braden River.

His future is incredibly bright — but his initial in-season practices with Florida Premier FC Southwest Florida, a United Premier Soccer League team, were a wake-up call for him and some of his teammates.

Alvarez had initially come to Florida Premier FC SWFL as a member of the organization’s U-19 team. Now, he was just a gangly teen sharing the field with 22- and 23-year old men.

“I immediately noticed how physical the game got," Alvarez said. "A lot of the U-19 players were complaining, because the UPSL players were just so much stronger than us. You had to adjust as there was definitely a difference in the pace of play and how players used their bodies.”

Florida Premier FC merged with Braden River Soccer Club in the summer to become a hotbed for East County soccer talent. The organization's UPSL team is its latest and most ambitious project to date.

The U.S. soccer pyramid is multi-faceted and complex. There are three tiers of professional soccer in the country. At the top is Division I, Major League Soccer (MLS), followed by the United Soccer League Championship in Division II and three other leagues in Division III, MLS Next, USL 1 and the NISA. One tier below that lies the UPSL, the top amateur soccer league in the country. 

For players within Florida Premier FC’s SWFL program, a chance to play in the UPSL represents the next step in their development. Succeed in the UPSL — a league with an average age of 22.5 — and players have a pathway to the USL, Division 1 NCAA soccer programs or European professional leagues. 

Tryouts for the UPSL team began in August, for players born in 2008 and after, with the club pulling most of its talent from campus’ U-19 team. Additional players were brought in to raise the level of competition. While the players on Florida Premier FC SWFL’s U-19 team are talented, the difference between the game they play and what the UPSL team plays, is night and day, said Head Coach Mario Cruz.

“The speed of play and the technical execution is on another level. Your touch on the ball has to be very clean. There’s a lot less time and space compared to what the U-19 players are used to at the club level — you have to be able to pass, receive, see the field and make decisions under pressure,” said Cruz. “Physically, you have to be a player who can play against grown men. You have to be strong, fast and very fit.”

Despite the differences in the level of play, however, Cruz’s players rose to the challenge. Four of the starters on the team, including Alvarez, were from Florida Premier’s U-19 club team. For those who rose to the occasion, the UPSL became a catalyst for accelerated growth. Forced to play outside of their comfort zones, the U-19 players played up to their competition instead of down to it.

It was an environment that allowed players like Alvarez, who Cruz referenced as the team’s best, to shine. Under the instruction of Cruz, who came to Florida Premier this year from the MLS Next league, the players were held to a level of accountability that they weren’t used to, said Alvarez. Whereas coaches at the club or high school level might not make note of a player’s mistakes, Cruz would catalog every one of them to use as teachable moments. 

Courtesy image

Those teachable moments paid off. It would be understandable for Florida Premier FC SWFL to struggle in its first year in the UPSL, but it didn’t. Instead, the team dominated the competition with a 7-1-2 record, good enough to win the Florida West division and get a seed in the Florida state playoffs, which begin on Dec. 15. Florida Premier FC SWFL’s standout season also promoted the team from Division 1, the second highest level of the UPSL to the league’s highest level, Premier, when the UPSL spring season starts in April. 

The turning point for the team, said Cruz, came at the halfway mark of the 10-game season. Florida Premier had been winning with relative ease, but he said there wasn’t a fire in his players — that is until the realization hit that if the team could finish first in the division it could be promoted to the Premier level by the end of the year.

“At the beginning, it was just about getting the experience of playing in the UPSL. Once we saw what we could do, however, that’s when the players started to get even more motivated to win,” said Cruz. “That attracted more attention to the program, more players from outside the club wanted to come train with us, and more scouts from higher leagues started to pay attention to us.”

For Florida Premier FC’s SWFL team, this season is only the beginning. Cruz hopes to retain about 70-80% of the roster when the team makes the jump to the Premier division in April. For players like Alvarez, it’s a chance to get one step closer to achieving their dreams.