When Adam Lenges, Cole Sotack and Aboubacar Camara walked off the field in Leesburg, Virginia after a 3-2 loss to D.C. United on March 7 they had no idea that they had just played their last game together.
The YSC Academy seniors, set to graduate in an online ceremony on Friday, have been teammates since 2015 when they were rostered on the first U13 team fielded by the Philadelphia Union in the Development Academy. Their involvement in the academy even pre-dates that season with the Union Juniors.
“It’s very sad to see everything that we’ve worked toward this year in a soccer sense and also in a community sense over these past years kind of just end,” said Lenges, who joined the academy at age 11 from Penn Fusion after starting his youth soccer career at Kirkwood FC in Delaware.