Before Japan beat Cameroon 2-1 to take an early lead in Group C, the 2011 FIFA female player of the year said she’d score a goal for the nine-year-old girl holding her hand.
Homare Sawa, making her sixth World Cup appearance as the captain of the defending champions from Japan, asked Gabriela MacFarlane if the U11 player was nervous for the walk to centre field at B.C. Place before the June 12 match.
“She’s my favourite player,” said MacFarlane, who told the veteran she was excited to be one of the thousands of children around the world chosen as a FIFA youth ambassador. “Then she asked, ‘Do you want me to score a goal for you.’”
Including MacFarlane, 22 girls from the Vancouver Athletics Football Club were player escorts for the World Cup double-header, which started with the Swiss trouncing Ecuador 10-1.
On other days, players from the North Shore, Port Moody, Penticton, Burnaby and West Vancouver soccer clubs took on the job. Across Canada, players aged six to 17 from 50 youth leagues escorted players, joined the ball crew and also carried team flags at the world’s largest women’s sporting event.
FIFA marketing director Thierry Weil said the goal to involve young local players “underscores the importance FIFA places on enabling children to connect with football, from an early age and regardless of gender.”
The FIFA youth program as it’s called, started in 1998 for the men’s World Cup held in France, and more than 10,000 children have since participated. The escorts are especially visible, their tiny hands cupped in the fingers of the sport’s superstars, their faces flashed on global television screens before kick-off.
“My cheeks hurt from so much smiling,” said Seraphina Crema Black.
“It’s really, really exciting and your mouth hurts because they tell you to smile for 30 minutes straight, you’re just smiling and listening to unknown anthems but it was so fun,” said Kyra Heaps. “If you try not to smile, it’s kind of hard because you’re so excited, anxious, nervous, and you’re happy so you kind of have to smile.”
Heaps was paired with Cameroon’s Gaelle Enganamouit, the 23-year-old striker who scored her team’s goal against Japan. Since both of them spoke French, Heaps talked to the international footballer in her own language.
The girls were outfitted with FIFA soccer kits and have been wearing the red Adidas shorts and yellow jerseys to their first practices as a newly formed gold team. Vancouver Athletics FC runs assessments for nine- and 10-year-old players as they reach the U11 age group and will be separated for the first time into competitive tiers with gold at the top.
“We don’t have a name yet. We want to be called the soccer machines,” said MacFarlane. “Our team is really good and we think we can just be the best.”
The club’s head coach and technical director, Steve Weston, said children continue to play sports as long as it remains fun, especially as the levels of competition and skill increase.
“You’ve got to want to come to practice, you’ve got to want to come out for the game,” said Weston. “If you work on basic skills at an early age and continue to reinforce them and progress, they keep a fun an element and they will always come and they will progress and they will enjoy it.”
Part of enjoying the game is knowing there are meaningful opportunities to advance. Holding Sawa’s hand at the World Cup is more than smiling for the cameras — it can cement a girl’s ambition.
“The hardest thing when it comes to soccer, compared to hockey in Canada, is that players don’t necessarily have heroes,” said Weston, pointing to the MLS and Vancouver Whitecaps as inspiration for boys.
Girls have individual idols to admire, but that doesn’t always leave them with a full sense of the opportunities or a road map to reaching their goals. And they don’t see themselves in Whitecaps uniforms, not since the Spartan women’s league folded four years ago. They must look elsewhere to find their role models or forge new paths and become the example.
Christine Sinclair is a celebrated and deserving Canadian icon, but young players need opportunities and examples that extend beyond Team Canada, said Leanne Nicolle, a board member of the Canadian Association for Advancement of Women and Sport (CAAWS).
“Girls play sports for different reasons than boys, and they have a unique sports culture all their own,” she said in April to promote a government initiative called Fuelling Women Champions, which seeks to understand what holds girls and women back from playing sports.
Girls drop out of sports at six times the rate of boys and only 19 per cent of adult Canadian women play sports, according to research cited by CAAWS.
“[Girls] place greater emphasis on the social aspect of sports and their aspirations are not about making it to the big leagues, because often, they don’t exist. As a result, more women play purely for the love of sport,” said Nicolle.
MacFarlane, the pre-teen player on the still-unnamed U11 gold team, was inspired by the Japanese captain when she saw her score a goal in a televised game. She aspires to play the same forward position as Sawa.
“I’ve learned from other strikers that a pass is a good key to getting goals and to just go all in and try your hardest,” said MacFarlane.
“I want to have role models because I want to be a professional soccer player like them. I want to play for the Team Canada.”
If not that team, her next choice: “I’ll play for Japan.”
Twitter: @MHStewart
