Mo Steel flag football teams win NFL Flag Football National Championships

How sweet it is to win a national championship — let alone two in the same year.

Just ask the Mo Steel flag football teams from the North Miami-Dade region. The 11-and-under and 14-and-under squads won the NFL Flag Football National Championships last month, marking the first time in 10 years that both divisions won gold the same year.

In the last decade, Coach David Fried has led the juniors to two national titles and the seniors to four in the tournament. He said the NFL tournament is one of the most prestigious in the nation.

Fried credits the teams’ success to a dedicated coaching staff and hard-working athletes who are willing to put in the extra time after school.

“There’s a reason why we’ve made the top five in the country for the last 10 years,” said Fried, whose teams play out of the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center, 18900 NE 25th Ave. “We have a great system in place, and there’s no signs of stopping us.”

This also marks the first time in three years that the seniors won the national championship. For the juniors, their win is equally sweet because they defended their title.

“It’s a pretty great feeling,” said juniors wide receiver and co-captain Belochi Lacombe, 12, a seventh-grader at Highland Oaks Middle School who lives in Aventura.

“Our coach keeps us focused and we work as a true team,” Belochi said. “We never argue and we’re level-headed. We’re not cocky. I think that’s the secret to our success.”

Steven Feld, 15, the co-captain and wide receiver of the seniors team, said he had won just about every other title in his five years of playing with Mo Steel — except the NFL title.

“For me, it was a dream come true to have finally won this,” the Miami Country Day School sophomore and North Miami Beach resident said. “I had won regionals, world. But never nationals. Not even when I was on the juniors team. So I’m pretty psyched right now.”

The games will be televised on ESPN at 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Fried said the players and their parents get a kick out of watching themselves on television.

“We have a watch party every year,” he said. “The kids feel like superstars.”

Aside from coaching the Mo Steel teams — which are named after their sponsors, a North Miami Beach steel company — Fried runs the Primetime Football League at the Michael-Ann Russell JCC. He started the league when he was 16.

Now 32, Fried never thought he would still be running the league nearly two decades later.

“I’ve always loved football and working with kids,” he said. “This all just sort of happened overnight. We started from nothing and now we have more than 500 kids playing.”

Fried adds that the league is also one of the few in Miami-Dade County that primarily consists of Jewish players.

“The kids are 95 percent Jewish,” he said. “That’s pretty unheard of.”

Next, the Mo Steel seniors may be headed to Ottawa, Canada for a shot at an international title. But budget cuts could prevent that from happening.

“We’re supposed to go to world’s but it might not happen this year,” said seniors quarterback and co-captain Jake Najjar, 15, a sophomore at the Hillel Community Day School who lives in Sunny Isles Beach.

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