American Heritage striker Juan Otero is Broward Boys’ Soccer Player of the Year for Classes 7A-5A
By Plantation American Heritage’s own lofty standards, the first three seasons of Juan Otero’s career in Plantation were a bit of a disappointment.
American Heritage, Broward County’s most successful program, didn’t reach any state title games from 2020-2022, so Otero and his Patriots set their sights on bringing American Heritage back to glory.
With their first state championship since 2019, the Patriots got it done and now their leading scorer is the Miami Herald’s Broward County Boys’ Soccer Player of the Year for Classes 7A-5A.
“The last four years, we haven’t been as competitive,” Otero said. “A lot of us just wanted to win a state championship.”
Otero wasn’t the only reason, but he was certainly one of the biggest.
The senior scored 20 goals — double anyone else on the team — and also handed out six assists to help American Heritage win the Class 5A championship.
It was the Patriots’ seventh state title — tied for second most in Florida High School Athletic Association history, the most in Broward history and tied for the most by a South Florida program.
Otero saved his best for the biggest moment, too. In the 5A title game, Otero netted his first hat trick of the season, scoring all three goals in American Heritage’s 3-1 win against Naples.
“It was an incredible feeling,” said Otero, who’s orally committed to Division III Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The overall turnaround was striking. The Patriots’ 19 wins were more than they had in the previous two seasons combined, and Otero scored 14 more goals than he did the previous year.
“Juan’s got all the attributes, all the qualities of a striker,” coach Todd Goodman said. “A striker has to have a short memory, so instead of dwelling on any type of past mistakes, you have to stay positive knowing that you’re going to have another opportunity.”
American Heritage’s core never lost confidence, though. Of the Patriots’ 12 field players to appear in at least 17 games, seven were seniors and four were juniors, and most had been playing for American Heritage since their freshman or sophomore years.
It provided the foundation for both the Patriots’ return to glory and Otero’s breakout year.
“We saw the ups and downs of the team, and last year we just united as a family,” Otero said. “It’s just the confidence that the team had. The coach described it as like a silent confidence. In the locker room, we weren’t the loud team who tried to hype each other up. ... It was just a confident quiet that whenever we’d come out we knew that we had a chance to win, we were going to win.”