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Ottawa Fury have announced the launch of The Fury Fanatics, a program designed as allowing local youth soccer players free access to all Ottawa Fury home games. The program will reach out to local Ottawa and Gatineau youth soccer programs, giving all players of participating clubs, aged 14 and under, Ottawa Fury lanyards with free electronic tickets attached.
TD Place, has a capacity of 24,000, meaning ticket sales are usually restricted to the south-side stand lower section for Fury games, however last season Fury regularly invited youth soccer clubs to be seats in the field level seats in the north-side stand. This program will offer tickets to thousands more children this season.
Youth development and community involvement has been the cornerstone of the Ottawa Fury mentality, and the club have made large advancements in their academy over the past year. The U15 club won the North American Super Y-League Championship in 2014, while the U19 team will compete in the 2015 Première Ligue de soccer du Québec, and the U17 in the PLSQ reserve league.
Fury head coach Marc Dos Santos had previously spoken to RNO about the youth programs and community involvement and said “This is not the club of OSEG or the Ottawa Fury, this is the club that belongs to the city of Ottawa, so we always want to give back in some way”. Dos Santos continued, “We never think it’s enough. To sum it up, it (this club) belongs to the people of Ottawa”
Phil Dos Santos and former Chelsea academy coach Darko Buser have taken over the youth team programs and will be looking to help the development of the Fury academy. By allowing youth to get involved with the Fury it will not only build help build the club, but will hopefully get more children involved in the youth soccer programs and have realistic dreams of potentially playing at TD Place themselves one day.
So far this preseason Fury have faced Toronto FC II and FC Montreal, USL academy sides of those cities MLS clubs, and won the games 3-2 and 1-0 respectively. Ottawa Fury will kick off their NASL season away in Carolina on April 4th, and will host Minnesota United in their home opener at TD Place on April 18th.
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