Women’s National Team – History in the Making!

Women’s football is quickly growing across Canada and the National Women’s Team that is heading to World’s this June in Stockholm Sweden is only going to help the female football program take off in our country. Currently we have teams in Saint John, Moncton, Halifax, Fredericton, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Saskatoon, Edmonton all of which have representation on the National Team.
45 of Canada’s Best Female football player were chosen to the team on Tuesday night! The journey began last July when the announcement was released that Canada would have its first ever National Women’s Team lead by head coach Larry Harlow. Things quickly progressed through the fall with the coaching staff being named and fall selection camps held in all 4 Maritime cities, Montreal, Winnipeg and Calgary. Since this is a user pay program throughout the winter months the 100 girls vying for a position on the team worked hard at promoting the program and fundraising to off set their fee of $3500 should they be selected to the team. Many of the girls, changed there life styles and worked very hard training 5-6 days a week. Every Monday, we would receive an email from the coaches with a tips, news updates and activiites that we needed to do before selection camp! Than March quickly arrived… most say it is hard to believe that we are here already. March 13th the coaching staff of Larry Harlow ( Head Coach); Jim Mather (Receiver Coach); Marcus Fitzgerald (Running Back Coach), Jeff Yascke ( OLINE); Craig Bachynski ( DB COACH), Josh Sacobie (QB’S), Tannis Wilson, ( d line) and Rick Soweita ( Linebackers) headed out west to Saskatoon. Then the following weekend they headed east to Oromocto NB. At both selection camps girls put everything on the line and left nothing in the tanks to prove that they were the best of the best to represent Canada. On Tuesday evenining of this week 45 girls were offered a spot on the team to represent Canada.
This was an experience of the a life time, when I received my call on Tuesday night and was named as a Linebacker for the National Team i was speechless… It is an amazing feeling to be able to be part of such a great program and to be representing our country at a world event. The has now really just begun…. as we look towards the next 10 weeks before training camp, the team will work the coaches on learning our offensive and defensive sets, continuing our training and working on our mental preparation…. so that when we all come together on June 19th in Saint John for final camp we are ready to fine tune our duties and pull together as a team!
I encourage anyone that has not had a chance to watch female football to do so, and be a voice and promote this across Canada!
Stay tuned as I continue to take you through the journey of the National Team making History!