Six soccer stars make Mountain Select Olympic Development Team

The players are part of the Moab futbol club

In June, six players with the Moab Futbol Clubwere invited to the final tryouts of the Mountain Select Olympic Development team—and all six made the team.

The final tryouts were in Vail; hundreds of kids from throughout the mountain west region were competing for a small number of spots.  

The six members of the Moab FC, a traveling soccer club open to kids ages 10-15, who competed are seventh-graders Jesus Gonzales and William Laprade, eighth-grader Hadley Kasprick, and ninth-graders Gemma Phillips, Cristian Gonzales, and Noah Laprade.

“These players have committed to year-round conditioning and soccer-specific training since first or second grade,” wrote Moab FC coach Danelle Ballengee in a press release. “They have made a commitment to work hard to improve their skills and knowledge of the game, even at their young age.” 

The club was founded by Pat Sheer in 2012, and Ballengee has coached for four years, taking over when her son joined the team. There’s good talent in Moab, Ballengee said, but the club still has to recruit players each year to fill out the roster—the main season occurs in the spring, with a few preseason fall games and practices. 

The Olympic Development Program allows kids to play on larger, more committed teams, Ballengee said, with and against different players than kids usually see. The Mountain Select team is newer, created just in the past few years. 

“It’s a great opportunity for them,” she said. The six players who made the program will still practice and play with their home team, the Moab FC, but will also practice once or twice per month with their ODP team and will attend invitational tournaments.

Last year, the Moab FC U15 team won the Premier Division of the Mountain Region League and won the gold division of the Border Battle Tournament. But many of last year’s U15 players are aging up to high school—Ballengee said she’s recruiting new kids for this season, and hopes to establish a similar team chemistry. She’s expecting to have a young team this year, she said. 

“We’ll do our best,” Ballengee said. “I come from a background where I’ve coached individual sports and endurance sports and I’m an athlete myself—but really, I’m a mom, and I want to provide opportunities for my kids. We’re going to play by ear and just do as best we can to help these kids feel comfortable and develop in their sport.” 

The club is recruiting players: it’s open to any kids ages 10-15 (born between 2009 and 2013), and there are scholarships available. Ballengee said she hopes to establish the club as a more popular sport in town—Moab kids tend to gravitate toward baseball, basketball and football. 

“We want to invite everybody,” Ballengee said. “That’s the nice thing about a small town: these kids who maybe wouldn’t have the chance to play in a big city, they can have a chance to play in Moab.” 

Anyone interested in joining Moab FC can contact Coach (Nellie) Ballengee at 970-389-4838.