League1 Ontario’s End-of-Year Awards Show Strong Link in Talented Pathway Alongside OPDL
League1 Ontario, the province’s pro-am, standards-based senior league, celebrated its top performers of the 2022 season at its end-of-year awards last week. The awards showed a strong link to Ontario’s Talented Pathway as 21 of 48 award winners or runner-ups spent time honing their skills in the Ontario Player Development League (OPDL).
League1 Ontario serves as a stepping stone from the high-performance youth level to the elite amateur and professional levels of the game in Canada's largest province. Its primary focus is to showcase and develop Canada’s future soccer stars, predominantly over 18 years of age, as well as providing an important platform for up-and-coming coaches and match officials to showcase themselves.
The OPDL is a standards-based, youth high-performance program that combines top-level competition with strict standards for the daily training environment. OPDL allows young players' to experience quality coaching and tailored development to maximize their potential. The program, delivered through 29 Licence Holders across the Province from Windsor in the West to Ottawa in the East, targets top athletes from the U13 to U17 age groups with the goal of progressing more individuals to higher level environments, such as League1 Ontario.
“The OPDL has become an influential high-performance program in the development of players, coaches and match officials within the Talented Pathway,” said Bryan Rosenfeld, Interim Director, Soccer Operations & Provincial Excel, Ontario Soccer. “Since the launch of the OPDL in 2014, we are now beginning to see more success stories at higher levels of the game in both League1 Ontario and within our National Team Programs, which also shows the value and importance of League1 Ontario as an integral part of the Talented Pathway.”
Together, the OPDL and League1 Ontario provide the main avenues to playing opportunities at the provincial, collegiate, national and professional levels.
Visit the League1 Ontario website for the complete list of winners:
- League1 Ontario 2022 end-of-season individual award winners for the Men’s Premier Division
- League1 Ontario 2022 end-of-season individual award winners for the Women’s Premier Division
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