Soccer hopes and dreams can be funny things.

Sometimes there’s not much to laugh about at all.

For Bennett Yort, a Charlotte Soccer Academy player, the past two years have brought more pain than smiles, but it looks like there is some daylight ahead after a lengthy trip through the valley of darkness.

Bennett was a fixture in the 1994 birth year cycle of the U14 Boys National Team, starting with the first team at left back and often being mentioned as a standout during the group’s various gatherings back in 2007 and 2008. Coaches liked his excellent technique and his notably sharp soccer brain. His good work with the youth national team also led to him being invited over for extended training with German club Borussia Monchengladbach, with an eye toward possible future involvement with their youth system on a full-time basis.

Things were looking very promising. Then Bennett’s body started to undermine his ambition.

At the first U15 BNT camp of the new cycle, in July of 2008, he strained a hamstring and had to miss most of the proceedings. He had switched from his small hometown club Augusta Arsenal to Atlanta-area club Concorde Fire despite it being a two-hour, one-way trip for he and his mother Caroline. The hamstring problem lingered a bit through the fall’s Region III Premier League season, but at the Disney Showcase in December Bennett injured his hip flexor, requiring him to sit out a full five months.

He recovered to play with the Concorde team at State Cup and at regionals, but in early August he was sidelined with a stress fracture in his foot, requiring a six-week layoff. This started a series of foot injuries, including three fractures plus a broken wrist, that plagued an entire year with new club Charlotte Soccer Academy.

In addition to this, Bennett grew approximately one foot in a little more than a year. The quick little fullback now had a completely different body. He admits to contemplating giving up playing the game at a high level, as the constant injuries and body changes had a major impact on his ability to impact the game the way he had. The 3-hour one way from Augusta to Charlotte wasn’t helping things either.

But this summer a couple of things happened that have seemed to make a big difference for Bennett. After this third foot fracture, a surgeon recommended an operation that was aimed at preventing reoccurrence, and it seems to have worked. Also, Bennett’s parents, Bennett and Caroline, decided that to cut down on the travel, Bennett would move with his mother to an apartment in Charlotte. Now he goes to school with some of his club teammates, such as Matt Brown, Drew Brown, Preston Shadad, Austin Yearwood, Jordan Murphy and Jake Keating, and there’s no longer up to 20 hours a week of just driving to and from training and games.

Bennett credits his coaches at Charlotte with being supportive, and the willingness of his parents to sacrifice for his sake also served as a motivator.

“I considered not moving or not really even playing soccer as seriously, but the idea of moving here brought me back into the seriousness of my soccer and helped me stay focused on where I want to be,” he said. “Just the consistency of the training here and being able to rest, not having to drive all that way and get to bed a lot later, that is a big help.”

Bennett has also regained a lot of lost confidence from his fall season at South Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte, where he has developed a knack for scoring goals. Soccer is fun again and with some on-field success, he can look forward to the coming academy season with much more anticipation than before.

Bennett now stands at 6-3, and is finding some advantages to all the growth that plagued him for more than a year.

“I don’t think I’m going to be different as far as being a smart player,” he said. “But now I can add athleticism, height and physical presence, where I’m winning balls on corners and stuff like that.”

He adds that he’s learned a life lesson from it too.

“You just need to to stay focused even when you have hard times and setbacks in your career,” he said. “If you want to go somewhere in soccer you have to focus on the future, and not the setbacks that you have.”