Lower Merion U19 boys ‘stuck together’ and earned the soccer club’s first national title

Charlie Dodds has been coaching the same team at Lower Merion Soccer Club since the 2015-16 season. They call themselves “the 007s” because the majority of them were born in 2007.

The now-U19 team has had its ups and downs over the years, but this season was historic. On July 14, Lower Merion won a U.S. Youth Soccer Presidents Cup. It was the first national title in club history.

“[Assistant coach Matt Kane] and I just looked at each other and said, ‘We did it,’” Dodds said. “You know, to see the smiles on the kids’ faces, and the ones who have been with us the whole time. This is something these kids are never going to forget.”

After earning a regional and state championship, Lower Merion beat Spartans FC Havasu, 1-0, in Tampa, Fla., for a national crown. Midfielder/forward Funsia Donzo, a rising senior at the Phelps School, scored the game-winning goal.

The club has been home to the 007s since they were 8 or 9 years old. Dodds said some of his players struggled on other travel teams and enjoyed the positive environment of LMSC.

“For years they didn’t get respect and they didn’t have success,” Dodds said. “Too many people measure success on wins and losses. That’s the way youth sports are moving: if you’re not winning, people want to leave. Success is the kid becoming a well-rounded child.”

Defender Cooper Lechtman, a recent Harriton High School graduate, can attest to this.

He played for Dodds in elementary school before leaving to play for another team. He missed the community that Dodds cultivated, so he came back to play for LMSC.

“We’ve built this culture through Charlie and through the players that he’s brought in,” Lechtman said. “He’s finding guys that fit in an inclusive culture that really pushed the team. I mean, some of the guys that I won Nationals with, I’ve been playing with for six, seven, eight years now at this point, so it’s a very big emphasis on a team.”

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Dodds and Kane want what’s best for their players, even if that means moving to a different club better suited for their play style and aspirations, like Lechtman did at one point. They believe that’s what makes LMSC different.

“We’ve always tried to put kids in front of the team,” Kane said. “That might sound a little backward for a team that just won a national title, but we’ve tried to put kids first, even if that meant that they should leave our team.”

For those who had stayed, the coaches tried to instill a brotherhood and remind players that there are multiple paths to playing college soccer, if that is their goal.

“What we’ve built over the years has been that it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Dodds said, adding that a player doesn’t have to be on the best travel team to get recruited.

The coaches credit the players, parents, and LMSC staff for helping create the community that led to this season’s success.

“It felt like a very fitting and well-deserved ending to a group of players, a group of coaches, a group of parents that stuck together and eventually brought themselves to where they deserve to be,” Lechtman said.

Graham Costello, who is Dodds’ stepgrandson and a rising junior at the Haverford School, joined the team in the spring after playing goalkeeper for a game in January. He said acclimating to the group was easy, despite many of the players knowing each other for years.

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“I joined the group knowing that I wanted to work hard, and I knew that as long as I put the work in and showed that I actually cared about making a good run that they would open up to me,” Costello said. “All the guys don’t care if you mess up. They just want the best for all of us.”

Added Donzo: “We’re like brothers on and off the field. We have a great connection. It’s changed my perspective about friendship and how far you can go in life having people around you that support you.”

So what clicked this season? After losing in the state semifinal two years ago and in overtime in the state final last season, the team was looking for redemption, Kane said. It also was the last chance for a title, as many 007s are moving on to college this fall.

“There’s a new level of competition on the team,” Kane said. “There’s a new commitment to work. Winning is the byproduct of all those intangibles. The culture, which by the way of definition for Charlie and I, culture is just the real-world expression of our values. So we really value relationships. We value being honest with each other, even if it hurts. We value follow through. We value players playing the game and not coaches playing the game. Those things have evolved.”