Royal Vale Set For Jump Rope for Heart Event

Over the past 14 years Royal Vale has raised $270,000. For the three years they have been first in Quebec among schools in fundraising for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Moojen and Ribeiro will present their  seventh annual College Soccer Combine  over the course of two weekends, May 26 and 27 (for males) and June 2 and 3 (for females), at Grier Park in Pierrefonds, offering elite male and female players the opportunity to walk away with lucrative scholarship opportunities. Ribeiro, 37, is a native of Montreal North who currently resides in Lachine. He spent 10 years as a midfielder for the Impact, retiring in 2011. Moojen, 35, was born in Brazil. He left there in 2004 to attend Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee. In 2006 he transferred to Clemson University, where he played the 2006 NCAA Division I season. While he was only a member of the Impact for the 2007 season, he met the woman who would become his bride here and eventually settled in St. Léonard. In 2012 Moojen proposed the College Combine idea to Ribeiro. The plan was to bring in coaches from American and Canadian universities seeking good soccer players, both males and females.

“There was nothing like this in Quebec,” said Moojen. “It really took off. At the start, of course, we had to pursue the universities. Now they call us. We have helped numerous young student-athletes from Quebec receive university scholarships to go play soccer in the United States and here in Canada as well.”

Last year there were 24 universities represented and 136 participants; 28 girls and 30 boys received scholarship offers to study and play in the US. “This year we already have 30 universities confirmed,” said Ribeiro, noting that soccer players aged 15 to 21 who sign up must be excellent players with good grades in school. “Each coach who comes here gets a detailed booklet with the names, photos and coordinates of the kids registered. It does not take them long to determine talent. The kids are broken into teams, so we can list their colour and sweater numbers as well.”