Super Y-League Feature
Friday, March 29, 2013
BRADENTON, Fla. – According to the parents of the Cleveland Internationals’ Nick Malinowski, his first word was ‘ball’.
They acted accordingly.
“My parents said my first word was ‘ball’, so they kind of wanted me to get into that early,” Malinowski said recently at the Super Y-League ODP Camp at IMG Academy. “They signed me up for a team, the Cleveland Blues, when I was like four years old, so I just grew up playing against older age groups as I got older, and then transitioned to the Internationals.”
Malinowski’s immersion into the game at an early age certainly appears to be paying off. After helping the Internationals reach the semifinals of the Boys U14 Division at the Super Y-League North American Finals last December, where they fell in a penalty shootout against the Ottawa Fury, Malinowski returned to IMG eager to add to the knowledge he’d gained the year before.
“As we were at the camp last year, I was one of the younger kids there,” he said. “I was playing against the older kids, and playing against bigger and faster kids really teaches you to play smarter and faster, and not rely on your own physical ability.”
Moving the ball quickly, and improving his touch, have been Malinowski’s principle focuses in the past year, and in a club like the Internationals there are certainly good role models to look up to. The Portland Timbers’ Darlington Nagbe and Michael Nanchoff are alumni of the club, with Malinowski and others having had the chance to practice alongside both, and others are now getting ready to head from the club into Division I college soccer.
“I look up to them as players,” Malinowski said, “and since I’m a developmental player in the academy, I look up to our U18 players as some of them are signing with Akron and big colleges, so I look up to them and see what I can take from them as well as Louie and George [Nanchoff], who are the coaches who have made this team successful.”
For Malinowski, as he turns 15 this year, the path toward college soccer is now developing. With college and U.S. National Team scouts again attending this year’s ODP Camp, he is getting used to the idea of having his game put under the microscope as coaches look for the players that will carry their programs to success in the future. While that can be nerve-wracking, Malinowski is looking forward to seeing where the game might take him in the future.
“You get nervous when people are watching, but it’s kinda fun just looking at college and planning out what you want to do when you have colleges in mind,” he said. “I’m looking forward to college.”
And given the access to top-level coaching that was available at IMG Academy, he was sure to take advantage of the expertise available as he tries to continue to grow as a player.
“[You’re] getting to know coaches, and what they want in a player, so you can get noticed,” Malinowski said. “When they tell you what you need to work on, you can take that away and bring that into your play, and into other camps, as you move toward college.”
After competing and learning among some of the best players in the country, Malinowski is certainly ready to get back to work in Cleveland.
“It’s really nice,” he said of the ODP experience. “You get to see a lot of players, you’re not the only good player here, and it really makes you want to push yourself harder to top yourself off.”