The British Virgin Islands Under 17 boys football team seems to be in good form ahead of the CONCACAF Championships at the end of the month, after securing good results in a recent series of friendly matches against the United States Virgin Islands.
The first game saw the BVI defeating the USVI opponents 4-0 on goals from Jahari Lacey, Emmanuel Etienne, and Azarni Callwood.
Speaking on the victory of that first match was Coach Jermain Abrams who works with the squad alongside Richie Morton.
He said, “We won and it sounds pretty easy, but we had to play really well and still have a lot of things to work on ahead of the CONCACAF tournament.”
“We threw away a lot of opportunities to score more on a very windy day,” Abrams added.
In game two, the BVI found themselves down 3-1 and it took some stern words of encouragement from the coaches to focus the boys and get them back into the game, which they did to level the game with a final score of 3-3.
The goal scorers for the BVI were Rush Broderick who scored 1 and Azarni Callwood who netted the other 2 goals.
“They were complacent to start and we had to remind them of life’s tough challenges and tough roads ahead”, stated Abrams.
He added, “We were a man and two goals down at 3-1 when we reached the second half water break and we were able to tell them that even when you are down on the mat but that’s the time a team shows resilience and that they had to fight to the end, and that’s what they did to pull it back to 3-3.”
The CONCACAF Under 17 Championship is scheduled for the end of August and the BVI is in Group A with the Bahamas, Bermuda, Guyana, Bonaire, and St Maarten.
The squad that travelled to the USVI included Oliver Henderson, Jaden Abrams, Jadon Abrams, Azarni Callwood, Rush Broderick, Tai Thomas, Gethin Jones, Sean Samuel, Jahari Lacey, Omari Simmons, T’Khay Morton, Orette Kennedy, Samuel Gilford, Emmanuel Etienne, Deshawn Richardson, Denvin Letteen, Nathaniel Williams and Pascal Perkins.