T&T for­ward Isa­iah Lee is set­ting him­self some big goals for 2019, and chief among them is be­ing a con­sis­tent pick on the Men’s Se­nior foot­ball team, which will see the So­caWar­riors in­volved in the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and Na­tions League.

Lee broke on to the in­ter­na­tion­al spot­light dur­ing the CON­CA­CAF Men’s Un­der-20 Cham­pi­onship at the IMG Acad­e­my in Braden­ton, in the USA dur­ing where he fin­ished as T&T’s top scor­er with four goals in­clud­ing a strike against even­tu­al cham­pi­ons the Unit­ed States.

His per­for­mances earned him a call-up with­in days to the se­nior team for an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against Iran which saw him make his se­nior de­but off the bench in the sec­ond half of the 1-0 de­feat in Tehran. It has not been a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el for a teenag­er in re­cent years for T&T where a 19-year-old se­cures his maid­en in­ter­na­tion­al run out against a top thir­ty world ranked na­tion mere days af­ter a youth tour­na­ment.

“I was a bit ner­vous at the first train­ing ses­sion (in Tehran) but I start­ed think­ing about why I got called up and that this op­por­tu­ni­ty could be a life chang­er in my foot­ball ca­reer,” Lee said.

“ I set­tled com­fort­ably in the sec­ond train­ing ses­sion hav­ing a growth mind­set in look­ing ahead to my fu­ture,” he said.

The call-up from coach Den­nis Lawrence was in­deed a sur­prise for the for­mer Na­pari­ma Col­lege play­er from Va­len­cia who is now en­rolled at Mon­roe Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege in the US. “It was a bit of a sur­prise but I was pleased be­cause I knew I had been work­ing hard. It’s al­ways a plea­sure to get the chance to play with play­ers who are at a high lev­el in pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball. I learned a lot from them in the short space of time I was giv­en.

“I was hap­py to meet with the whole team af­ter fly­ing for so many hours to get to Iran. As a new mem­ber to the team, I was con­fi­dent enough to get through the singing at din­ner which is like an ori­en­ta­tion for the new calls up in front of the play­ers and staff. All the play­ers made me feel com­fort­able be­ing around the team. I adapt­ed well since I had now come from a com­pet­i­tive tour­na­ment and play­ing against strong teams like the US,” Lee con­tin­ued.

He spoke about his ini­tial in­ter­ac­tion with Lawrence and how it played out over the few days in Tehran.

“Coach was ex­plain­ing to me the style of foot­ball he wants me to per­form as a strik­er on the pitch along with some tac­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion on how to en­hance my per­son­al per­for­mance. It was a great ex­pe­ri­ence get­ting to play at a high­er lev­el than col­lege foot­ball.

“This ex­pe­ri­ence built my con­fi­dence for pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball. I’m thank­ful for the ex­pe­ri­ence and this was an ex­cit­ing pe­ri­od be­ing able to make my de­but for my na­tion­al se­nior team and hope­ful­ly, there will be more caps to come. I re­al­ly want to get in­to the team on a con­sis­tent ba­sis in 2019 es­pe­cial­ly with the Gold Cup around the cor­ner,” Lee con­clud­ed.

His head coach at Mon­roe, Nel­son Cu­pel­lo, said it didn’t take long for the play­er to dis­tin­guish him­self on the pitch in Rochester.

“Isa­iah was that play­er who brought some pro­fes­sion­al­ism to the team. The fact that he was on the U-20 na­tion­al team showed all of his team­mates how to train to get to that lev­el. It was con­ta­gious,” Cu­pel­lo said.

“Isa­iah made every­one around him bet­ter,” Cu­pel­lo said. “That’s what made him so valu­able to us when he was on the field. We re­al­ly missed him when he left to rep­re­sent his coun­try.”