KINGSTON, Jamaica — Head coach of Jamaica’s Under-15 Reggae Boyz, Andrew Peart, said his team’s abundance of quality players was key to success en route to winning the CONCACAF B League in Aruba.

Jamaica defeated Puerto Rico 2-0 in the final on Saturday and finished the tournament unbeaten, scoring 15 goals and conceding twice in five games.

“If you look at our bench, we could play anybody at any given time, and that proved important as the game went on, where we could make some substitutions; who came on really impacted the game,” Peart pointed out to the Jamaica Observer.

“I thought it was a fantastic achievement for the boys, coming into this tournament, they really were committed to building on the success they had last year at the CFU level,” he said.

“Coming up to the CONCACAF level in League B and showing that they have what it takes to compete against the teams that are ranked in this division.”

Jamaica were perfect throughout, beating  Belize 2-0, Aruba 4-0, and Curacao 1-0 in the group stage before dispatching Trinidad and Tobago 6-2 in the semi-final.

“So, whether it is League A or League B, it doesn’t matter as you have to play who is in front of you and that’s very important to start building that mindset from early whoever is in front of you, you need to perform and performance was one of the key terms we highlighted before coming here,” Peart explained.

Goals by Tevin Savage of Jamaica College and Kelvin Brown of Kingston College propelled Jamaica to the title, thwarting a stubborn Puerto Rican team.

“For the final, we knew the Puerto Rican team because they have been building a very good programme. We have watched them improve their performances over the last four years, and when you look at the calibre of players, they have players in the MLS academies,” Peart noted.

“Their captain, Wilfredo Reyes, is playing in Spain at an academy, and when we look at the team, they are very aggressive, very direct, so they would pressure us, but we were prepared for that,” he added.

“It’s important that we do a lot of opposition analysis and at least give the boys some information and prepare them for what they are going to face going into the game,” said Peart.

“[it was] a very good start from us, scoring two minutes in, and it was about controlling it, and then the fatigue level for both teams started to come in play as the game went on because five games in six days started to take a toll,” he explained.

Jamaica got a dream start when a long ball caused problems in the box, and the tall and powerful Brown, standing at 6 ft 4 inches, outmuscled the defender and teed up Savage, who made no mistake from just inside the box.

But celebrations were on hold until Brown, who had a monster game, headed home in time-added.

“But we were confident that we had the better team in terms of the number of quality players available to us,” said Peart.

“All in all, it was a very good tournament. There are some things that we have highlighted that we need to improve on as a team and also as a country, so these boys can have a good platform going forward to the U17s,” he added.