The U.S. Soccer Development Academy season continued this Saturday as California Odyssey made its season debut, traveling south to face San Diego Surf in both U16 and U18 age groups.

U18: San Diego Surf 1 – 1 Cal Odyssey

A late goal helped Cal Odyssey salvage a point in its first game of the season. Villyan Bijev took advantage of open space down the middle of the field to send a through ball to Jon-Paul Medina (#66 2011 Top 100) inside the 18-yard box. Medina then crossed it to an open Gregory Antognoli (#100 2012 Top 100) for the easy tap in to level the match.

“The good thing for us is that our team has a lot of talent,” Cal Odyssey Head Coach J.J. Wozniak said. “We had a very good preseason and a lot of the guys are very motivated as well as experienced. We come down here and just try to play soccer. It looked pretty good today.”

San Diego Surf saw itself breaking the stalemate earlier in the match, when Christofer Gaitan’s low cross skidded behind his intended target and onto the feet of Georgio Fasoulis, who rifled a low blast past Cal Odyssey’s goalkeeper.

The frustration was evident on San Diego Surf Head Coach David Cohen.

“Three times that we have gone up and three times we let opponents tie,” Cohen said. “We have to find a way and start being able to finish off games.”

There were several players who made an impact for Cal Odyssey. Aside from Medina, Jesus Garcia and Elijah Christiansen-Gallego were consistent in the midfield. Great dribble work and effective passes created several chances that were eventually wasted or blocked by Surf’s back line.

“The great thing about all of them is that they have so much experience and have fantastic chemistry between them,” Wozniak said. “We have those three guys that hold the ball down and play very technical.”

There were also impressive personal performances by Surf, the big threat coming from Chrisofer Gaitan. He was the link between the defense and the offense, but occasionally wandered across the field. However, his great footwork and ability to run through defenders more than made up for it.

“Gaitan is a very young player,” Cohen said. “The more time he has on the field, the better he’ll become.”

Kevin Bauckman came out huge for Surf, as he was a wall in the back line. He intercepted and broke down several passes and was smart pushing up. His biggest contribution was blocking two consecutive point-blank shots on the goal line, preventing what could have been a Surf loss.

Rudy Trujillo also played with fantastic ball control in tight spaces and great vision on the field. He was able to lay off the ball in the right moments and subsequently find himself open space to receive the ball.

When top-notch players like Isaiah Trejo, Reid McKenna, Kevin Hunter, and Juan Delgado are on the field, a great match was a guaranteed.

U16: San Diego Surf 0 – 0 Cal Odyssey  

It was a midfield war between these two squads, preventing the offenses from performing their task and resulting in a scoreless match.

Midfield Surf duo Rui Adachi and Benjamin Lee were the heavy hitters as they found tons of space and created havoc on the defense, but were consistently stopped in the offensive third.

On the contrary, it was Cal Odyssey defenders Norberto Calderon and Myles Lark that were the reason why Surf was kept scoreless. A stronghold in the back, not very many balls went passed the two defenders. Norberto also aided in the midfield with some good overlapping runs.

Neither goalkeepers did a lot of work, but the work that they did was impressive. For Surf, Kevin Armstrong stopped a couple of hard shots towards the latter part of the game, while Cal Odyssey’s Froylan Onofre sacrificed his body snatching low balls from the feet of strikers and having an important kick save in the early minutes of the match.