The Ottawa Fury Soccer Club held tryouts for U15 and U16 players on Tuesday night at the Terry Fox Athletic Facility.
After seeing the Canadian Olympic women’s soccer team win bronze at the London 2012 Olympic Games this summer and watching hometown heroes, the Ottawa Fury, win their first W-League championship in a near-perfect season, more and more local girls are taking to the pitch.
According to Eastern Ontario District Soccer Association 15,000 girls will be playing soccer this year.
Women’s soccer has grown in popularity across the country in the past 10 years and Canada remains one of the few countries where the women’s game is more prolific than the men’s.
There are few places in Canada that feel this more than Ottawa. The Canadian Soccer Association is hard at work in its Centretown offices organizing the upcoming 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup which will see games hosted in six Canadian cities, including Ottawa’s Lansdowne Park.
With such success in the past year, it’s clear these athletes are inspiring a new generation.
“We need role models; that’s what happened in the U.S. When the women found success in the World Cup, all the younger ones wanted to be like Mia Hamm,” says Audra Sherman, the Ontario Soccer Association co-ordinator. “I think girls need to look up and have role models, to see these women play and they see that they can actually play.”
Of the soccer-playing population in Ontario, almost 40 per cent of players are female, according to Sherman – a happy statistic for Ottawa Fury officials.
“Younger girls want to start playing and a big thing is we won the W-League championship which brought a lot to the city,” says Jimmy Zito, the Ottawa Fury’s development coach.
“The rise in our attendance and our development programmes, we went from about 85-90 people last year, we’re up to almost 200 now for this year. I think that’s obviously because of the success Canada had.”
As well as being fun and a good way for young girls to keep fit, playing soccer brings opportunities to young players that may not be open to them without it.
Now entering its 10th season, more than 80 Ottawa Fury players have earned scholarships to NCAA universities in the United States and more than 100 have gone on to play college and university soccer in Canada.
“The biggest goal for all the kids I get to work with, and the biggest goal we put on them is to get their schooling paid for,” says Zito. “Whether it’s Canadian or American, get it all sorted, save your family that $100,000, or $30-40,000 whatever it is.”
The 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup will give younger players the opportunity to see world class female players from across the globe and watch a standard of play they might one day be a part of, says Ottawa Fury W-League head coach Dom Oliveri.
“I think it’s a great event for Ottawa soccer, it gives female players here in Ottawa a chance to see world class soccer live and hopefully those players will, at some time, aspire to play at that level.”
With development programs such as the one the one at Ottawa Fury and more money being invested by the Canadian Soccer Association there is every chance that the young players of today will become the nation’s heroines of tomorrow.
“Slowly, the sport is growing. Women’s soccer is relatively new to the country and I think it’ll just continue to grow and the more events you can bring specifically to Ottawa and to Canadian soccer the better it is for the younger players,” says Oliveri.
“They can aspire to be those players, they can use them as role models. There’s nothing like seeing a live game, live and in person.”