Chicago Fire Premier - Super-20 Team

Super-20 Team

The Fire Premier, in its affiliation with the MLS Chicago Fire, became a member of the USL Super-20 league in 2007. Continuing with the program's successful tradition, the team qualified for the North American Finals with an undefeated regular season record in 2007. The team moved all the way through to the North American Championship defeating MLS player development teams from DC United and New York Red Bulls on the way, before falling in the North American Championship to the Player Development Academy of New Jersey, by a score of 3-1. Larry Sunderland was named Coach of the Year for the Super-20 division and players Chris Schuler (Creighton University) and Braden Fleak (Wright St. University) were named to the Super-20 All League team.

On August 3, 2008 the Chicago Fire Super-20 team became the first MLS player development team to win a league championship by becoming the North American Super 20 champions after defeating Toronto 2-1 in the Super-20 Final. The win capped a dominating finals competition in which the Fire went 5-0 and outscored the other conference qualifiers by an aggregate score of 17-2, including a 3-0 win over the DC United player development team in the semifinals. The Fire qualified for the North American Finals after finishing on top of the Midwest Conference with a record of 10-1-0. The Fire finished the season with a 15 game winning streak and a final record of 15-1-0. Their two year record of 23-2-3 is the best in North America in the Super 20 division. The team was led by captains and Super 20 League Co-MVP's Robert Younger (Illinois-Chicago) and Mark Blades (Northwestern). Mike Stephens (UCLA) and Chris Cutshaw (Bradley) were named to the All-Finals team and Matt Eliason (Northwestern) won the Golden Boot award as the leading scorer in the North American Finals with 6 goals in 5 matches, including the game winner in the 81st minute of the Championship match against Toronto.