For Glenburnie native Jacob Ball, it appears his soccer journey will be taking him overseas.
In an interview with Tourism Kingston, Ball said he hopes to land in Germany, Sweden, or Australia to ply his skills.
That ambition isn't a stretch — it's backed by the kind of season that gets scouts' attention.
Ball, 21, scored nine goals in 11 games as a winger for the Queen's Gaels in the 2025 season. He finished tied for third in the Ontario University Athletics men's soccer scoring.
In 2025, the Gaels finished the regular season at 6–5–1 and ended up in a three-way tie for third place with Trent and Ontario Tech. In the first round of the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) playoffs, Ball scored once in a 3–2 elimination loss to the Ridgebacks.
This summer, Ball played club soccer for the Kingston Sentinels in the Ontario Premier League 3, where he led the league in scoring with 18 goals.
That scoring title came with a bigger payoff for the club. Kingston closed out its OPL3 season with a 3–1 extra-time win over Railway City FC that clinched promotion to OPL2 for next year — and Ball scored all three of Kingston's goals in the match. Ball was named the club's Player of the Month for July by its own coaching staff. Sentinels head coach Christian Hoefler said he was “optimistic we'll see him earn an opportunity in the professional game, and I hope he becomes one of the select few players from Kingston to represent Canada on the international stage one day.”
Between the two seasons, it's the most productive stretch of his career — and Ball feels it.
I feel I'm in a position to take the next step and hopefully I can get my first contract and go from there. I'm excited to go on the field, I'm excited to train.
It's a long way from where the whole thing started.
Growing up, Ball wanted to play hockey like many young people in the Kingston area, but a blood clotting disorder prevented him from playing sports where there was a chance he'd get cut, so he started playing soccer at the age of four and hasn't looked back since.
“I'm still trying to live out that dream, I haven't had an issue with it,” Ball said of the blood clotting issue. “Thankfully, it hasn't been an issue for the last couple of years, but when I was younger it was definitely more noticeable.”
“I started playing competitive when I was six and I played two years up for a couple of years for Kingston United.”
That early start had a lot of help behind it.
His dad, Derek, coached him for the first seven years of his minor soccer career and his mom, Stacey, helped him thrive on and off the pitch.
“My dad spent hours and hours on the field with me just training, practising, and having fun ever since I was a kid. He was a huge supporter.” “Mom was the one getting the equipment making sure everything was clean and I showed up on time. The reason I'm here is because of my parents and grandparents, it was a huge collective effort for me to be able to play and become as good as I am.”
Two mentors outside the family also left their mark.
Two big coaches in my life were Carlo Cannovan, who is the head coach of St. Lawrence College and his father Jim Cannovan,” Ball said. “I learned a lot from both of them and still talk to them to this day, they're good family friends.
With that foundation in place, Ball's playing career took him outside Kingston before it brought him back.
Ball played on the Jr. Gaels (now Athletico Kingston) in his last couple of youth sports seasons. He then moved on to play in Ottawa and Oakville for competitive club teams before coming back to Kingston and played two years at St. Lawrence College and one season in Toronto with Humber College where the Hawks won the national college championship in New Brunswick. He played the 2025 season for the Queen's Gaels men's team.
“I have one more year (of eligibility) if I want to use it but I'm just going to try and play professionally if I can and if it doesn't work out for some reason I'll come back to Queen's,” Ball said.
Going into his fourth academic year at Queen's, Ball is majoring in economics and will be taking his courses remotely.
He said there's many skills one can transfer from soccer for use in real life such as hard work and discipline. For now, that combination of hard work and discipline is aimed at one goal: a professional contract, somewhere overseas.
