Kei­th Jef­fery, tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of San Juan Jabloteh foot­ball club was full of praise for his Un­der-13 play­ers, and tech­ni­cal staff fol­low­ing their fifth straight lien on the T&T Youth Pro League (YPL) crown with a 6-1 maul­ing of De­fence Force at San Juan North Sec­ondary School Ground, Bourg Mu­la­tresse, San Juan on Sat­ur­day.

With the win, Jabloteh Un­der-13s, coached by Dave Weekes and An­dre ‘Andy’ Morales al­so booked a spot in the 2020 Sco­tia­bank Con­ca­caf Un­der-13 Cham­pi­ons League.

Jabloteh will al­so com­pete in this year's CON­CA­CAF Un­der-13 Cham­pi­ons League (Au­gust 10-17) in Cos­ta Ri­ca as cham­pi­ons of last sea­son’s YPL, and their fol­low-up this sea­son earns them the fourth qual­i­fi­ca­tion at the in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment in 2020, hav­ing reached the quar­ter­fi­nals last year.

Speak­ing af­ter the team's win on Sat­ur­day, Jef­frey, who is al­so first team head coach of the San Juan club, said win­ning the youngest age-group a fifth time in a row shows the lev­el of the stan­dard set by Jabloteh in youth foot­ball.

"We have a brand in our youth pro­gramme,” he point­ed out. “ …and we ask play­ers com­ing in­to Jabloteh to ho­n­our this brand which has a his­to­ry of suc­cess.”

“We have Thane [De­venish], our sec­ond choice goal­keep­er we used as a wide out­field play­er and he scored nine goals in the tour­na­ment in­clud­ing two hat-tricks; Joachim Cal­en­dar, a stal­wart at the back; Kendell Cas­tle, who has im­proved in mid­field; Abil­i­ty Hazel, cap­tain of the team who has done an ex­cel­lent job in keep­ing a lot of clean sheets; and we have [Lin­dell] Sween, an­oth­er top goal scor­er for us. These play­ers make up the back­bone of the team that has made us suc­cess­ful for the 2019 sea­son,” said a glow­ing Jef­frey.

He added, “Coach­es Weekes and Morales have as­sist­ed me in the suc­cess of the team and the ad­min­is­tra­tive man­agers mak­ing every­thing pos­si­ble ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly are Char­maine Vil­lafana and Cyril George, so it was a to­tal ef­fort and the suc­cess be­longs to every­one at the club.”

Jabloteh U13s, mean­while, is look­ing ahead to the Youth Pro League Cup (knock­out) May 26 – June 16, and the Con­ca­caf U13 Cham­pi­ons League in Au­gust.

Look­ing ahead, Jef­frey said the YPL Cup com­pe­ti­tion will pro­vide a huge chal­lenge for his out­fit, point­ing out that Un­der-13 teams such as Cen­tral FC, North East Stars and Club San­do are very good teams.

“In knock­out, it’s on the day so we must pre­pare to go very hard. It will be a fi­nal for us against every team we face.”

“We wel­come the chal­lenges as we pre­pare for the CON­CA­CAF Un­der-13 Cham­pi­ons League.

He added, "We reached the quar­ter­fi­nals the two times be­fore and this year we want to go one step fur­ther. So every­thing now will fall un­der our prepa­ra­tion for Con­ca­caf,” end­ed Jef­frey.

Jabloteh vis­its San­do at Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um on Sun­day 19 May for their fi­nal league match be­fore the Youth Pro League knock­out com­pe­ti­tion be­gins around the cor­ner—May 26 – June 16.

The race for the YPL Un­der-15 and Un­der-17 ti­tles, how­ev­er, goes down to the wire on fi­nal league day next Sun­day with four teams in each di­vi­sion still stand­ing with a math­e­mat­i­cal chance.

Club San­do (19 points) leads the Un­der-17 ta­ble af­ter ek­ing a 1-0 win over W Con­nec­tion but An­gus Eve’s play­ers are just one point ahead of Po­lice FC and Pt Fortin Civic (both on 18 points) af­ter the young Blues de­feat­ed the Pt Fortin side 3-1 on Sun­day.

W Con­nec­tion and Cen­tral (both on 16 points) oc­cu­py fourth and fifth re­spec­tive­ly on the Un­der-17 stand­ings ahead of Sun­day’s fi­nal match day.

Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers (18 points) leads the Un­der-15 stand­ings and will wel­come De­fence Force on Sun­day at D’Abadie Recre­ation Ground in hopes of hold­ing off Jabloteh (17 points), Po­lice (16 points) and Civic (16 points) for the di­vi­sion’s ti­tle.

Oth­er fi­nal league day fix­tures in­clude Civic host­ing Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed at Ma­haica Oval and Po­lice against host North East Stars at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um.

Sun­day's Re­sults

Un­der-13 Di­vi­sion:

Pt Fortin Civic 1 (Kwe­si Seales 25th) vs Po­lice FC 3 (Stephon James 29th, 60th, 67th, Tyrese Man­swell 54th)

Un­der-15 Di­vi­sion:

Pt Fortin Civic 0 vs Po­lice FC 0

Un­der-17 Di­vi­sion:

Pt Fortin Civic 1 (Dar­i­on Camp­bell 50th) vs Po­lice FC 3 (Matthias Hink­son 26th, Erin Steeple 51st, 80th)