Sitting on the couch in a buddy's apartment on the last day of January, Kharlton Belmar watched TV and waited for a call.

Belmar was back in Richmond, Va., working out on his own. School had started, but he wasn't enrolled. Most of his friends were in class at Virginia Commonwealth, where he played soccer for four seasons.

Belmar, a psychology major who put off graduation to pursue his dream of playing soccer, was glued to coverage of the Major League Soccer draft, wondering if his name would be called.

On that couch, in front of that screen, he was stressed. And except for one friend, alone with his worries.

"The guy I was staying with was at practice. Other guys had to go to class and couldn't watch the draft with me," Belmar said.

He had spent the previous summer playing for the Portland Timbers U-23 squad in the Premier Development League.

He had acquitted himself well, playing in 14 matches, scoring eight goals and adding an assist. He was the team's player of the year and earned PDL all-Western Conference honors. He liked the organization and he liked Portland.

Now his Honda Accord was packed and ready for a return trip to the Pacific Northwest. But would the Timbers pick him?

"I was texting my agent back and forth," Belmar said. "He said he didn't know what was happening."

Belmar's phone rang right before the 34th pick. It was his agent.

"You're heading to Portland. Congrats."

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Kharlton Belmar 7 Gallery: Kharlton Belmar

Yes, the spelling of his first name is unusual. Kharlton. Not Carlton, like his great-grandfather.

"His father came up with the spelling," said his mother, Charmaine Belmar.

Frank Belmar, Kharlton's father, was a Navy man, a chief petty officer who was stationed in San Diego when Kharlton was born. The family, which now includes Jazmine, his younger sister, moved to Virginia Beach in 1996, when Kharlton was four years old.

Frank and Charmaine both came from Grenada, an island nation in the southeastern Caribbean Sea. Frank played cricket and soccer and introduced his son to both sports at a young age.

Kharlton said he tried cricket, but batsmen, white flannels and wickets weren't for him. Soccer became the bond between father and son.

Frank had played soccer in school and on club teams in Grenada. In the Navy, he played and coached.

"That was the weekend thing," Charmaine said.

Kharlton started playing soccer when he was five years old, at the local YMCA. He was a goalkeeper. "I hated it," Kharlton said.

He migrated to winger and then, finally, found his calling as a central striker as he moved up the ladder, from club to travel teams and into academy programs.

Then as now, Kharlton Belmar was easy to pick out on the field. He plays as high -- and as aggressively -- as a defense will let him go. And there are no casual strolls in the box for a goalkeeper when Belmar is around. He hounds the netminder, forces the ball back in play, trolling, always waiting for one miscue he can turn into a goal.

That relentless drive, his mother said, comes from his father. "I'm sure that's a driving force for him," Charmaine said. "He wants his dad to be proud of him."

Frank Belmar died in April 2009 of cancer, at home. Charmaine said some nights near the end, he'd be agitated and that would wake her up. But on that night, she said she woke up because he had been so quiet. "I realized I didn't hear him at all," she said. "Then, about two minutes later, I heard a gasp, and that was the last."

Kharlton was 16, and his high school team had a game that night.

* * *

Jason Byzewski was Kharlton's coach at Salem High School in Virginia Beach. He was in touch with him the day his father died in 2009.

"We had a little talk," Byzewski said. "I wanted to do what was best for him."

Byzewski asked Kharlton what he needed: "Did he want to spend more time with his family? Or spend more time with his second family?"

Kharlton wanted to play.

"He wanted to honor his father's memory. To go out there and put everything out on the field," Byzewski said.

Kharlton learned of his father's death at 5:30 that morning, when he got up, brushed his teeth and prepared for school. His mother sat down on his bed.

"She said 'your dad just passed away,'" Kharlton said. "I kind of broke down. I cried for a little bit."

But he knew he had to pull himself together. He went into his younger sister's bedroom and laid down on the bed. When Jazmine woke up, he told her the terrible news. He was the man of the house now, a role his father had assigned to him just before his death.

During Frank Belmar's final stay in a hospital, before he went home for his last days, he and Kharlton had a private talk.

"He told the rest of the family to get out of the room," Kharlton said. "He said, 'Make sure you make something of yourself. Take care of your mom and sister.'"

Kharlton said his father always had given him a hard time about grades. And on that day, in that moment when a father knows his fate, Frank Belmar told his son to keep working hard. "That's why, that day, I felt like I owed him."

So, Kharlton played that night. His team won.

* * *

Last October, the Portland Timbers announced they would field their own USL team that would begin play in the 2015 season.

The team, known as T2, has its own coaching staff, led by Jay Vidovich, and plays with the same philosophy and possession-oriented style as the MLS Timbers.

It's part of a concerted effort by the Timbers and other Major League Soccer teams to have more control over developing players in a more professional environment.

And the timing was perfect for Belmar who came to the attention of the Timbers through his college coach, Dave Giffard, a former assistant to Portland head coach Caleb Porter, when both were at the University of Akron.

"I'm not exactly sure where I'd be," without T2, Belmar said. "Talking to my agent, if things didn't work out here, I could try to get in on some other team, but I don't really know where I'd be.

The Timbers already had scouted him at the college level, liked what they saw, and brought him in to the U-23 team. After his success at that level, Portland targeted him in the draft.

"We were impressed with the body of work in the PDL season," Gavin Wilkinson, the Timbers' general manager, said. "We felt he had a profile we could develop."

He has not disappointed. Belmar scored the first goal in T2 history. He had a goal in T2's 2-0 win over the PDL Michigan Bucks in the second round of the 2015 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. He was named to the USL team of the week in Week 2 of the season, and was Player of the Week in Week 6 after scoring two goals against AZ United.

Belmar fits into the idea of the Timbers' "vertical-integration" hierarchy. With T2, he stays in Portland and is part of a program with one identity that breeds familiarity and consistency.

"He has drive. He has athleticism. He has a hunger to be successful," Wilkinson said. "Coming into this atmosphere, being around professionals, whet the appetite for him."

Without it, Belmar said he wasn't sure what he would have done, where he would have gone. Staying in Portland, staying with the Timbers at the T2 level, was fine with him.

Back in Virginia, his mother said she watches all his games online. Charmaine said she plans to come to Portland later this summer, likely in July, to watch him play in person.

Meantime, she said Kharlton calls her after every win. And she offers a little coaching advice of her own: "Don't just call me when you win. I want to hear from you when you lose, too."