‘Is this real life? Am I dreaming now?’
Jordyn Listro’s Canadian soccer tale has a happier ending than many.
Jordyn Listro felt no fear ahead of her National Women’s Soccer League debut for the Orlando Pride this past September.
The 25-year-old midfielder from North York had waited years to make her North American professional debut, exhausting all avenues on a path she found herself navigating largely alone — despite having once been in the Canadian national team’s pipeline and a four-year starter at the University of South Florida, an NCAA Division I program.
It was a journey that took Listro to Spain after college on her first pro contract, a decision she began to question when she felt she couldn’t get Canada Soccer’s attention.
Later, unable to find a way to train at the highest level in Canada, she took a job at a medical technologies company and began to wonder if she’d reached a dead end in the sport. Then last spring, she tried calling around to NWSL clubs and wound up attending an open tryout for the Pride, who invited her back for the pre-season. A torn hamstring just days before threatened her chances, but delays caused by the pandemic gave her time to heal.
In early September, Listro was one of seven players who signed short-term contracts with Orlando. It was a long-awaited stop on a winding road.
“I know how long I’ve been waiting for this opportunity, and the preparation I did made me not as nervous (for her debut),” Listro said. “After the game I was like, ‘Is this real life? Am I dreaming right now?’ ”
Four years earlier, she had been lost.
After growing up in competitive soccer environments, Listro’s eyes had been opened to a potential future in the sport.
Years spent in the provincial program and training at the Ontario Soccer Centre in Vaughan led to a spot on the under-17 national team and at the U-17 Women’s World Cup in Azerbaijan in 2012 — where she represented Canada alongside Kadeisha Buchanan, Ashley Lawrence, Quinn, Nichelle Prince and Kailen Sheridan.
Then it was off to college for the defensive midfielder, where she said her association with Canada Soccer went cold. She said she received an email about attending an under-20 camp and was asked to respond with the positions she could play, then never heard back.
She still wanted to go as far as she could in the sport. But as her college career ended, she felt there was nowhere else to turn.
“It’s weird, you’re just left in a place where you don’t know what to do,” Listro said.
It’s a predicament familiar to many high-calibre Canadian players. Gaps exist in the women’s soccer system in this country, particularly for players who are17 or 21— either preparing to attend or ready to leave college. With little knowledge of their options and no clear pathway to the pro game if they aren’t on the national team, they are left to figure it out on their own or leave the sport altogether.
As women’s soccer continues to grow around the world, Listro and others worry that those gaps will eventually hurt the national team’s standing.
“The national team is top 10 in the world, but how much better could you be if you had a big pool of players, because you could be missing out all the time,” Listro said.
Audra Sherman, a former pro player and current head coach of Ontario Tech University’s women’s program in Oshawa, said she often fields questions from players about what do to after post-secondary education.
“Other than me having a network and contacts, I can’t say there is a pathway,” she said.
For Canadian players coming out of USports programs, Sherman added, the exposure is very limited. It’s a bit more clear in the United States with the NWSL as a possibility. But Canadian NWSL players who are not allocated (and therefore paid) by Canada Soccer are considered international players, vying with athletes from every country other than the U.S. for just 36 spots leaguewide, four per team.
Listro managed to do it, but it requires everything to line up perfectly. That’s a hard sell for some. Sherman encourages her top-level players to consider lower leagues in Europe, but there are often financial concerns.
The blueprint for a Canadianmade solution, Sherman says, starts with a change in mentality, encouraging female players to shoot for pro careers on top of USports or NCAA scholarships from a young age. To support that, coaches require more education when it comes to creating opportunities for elite players and interacting with agents.
Thinking even bigger: Finding a way to launch a Canadianbased women’s pro league would provide a clear pathway after college, and allow Canada Soccer to track players more easily. A domestic league could be especially important for identifying talent that develops late, a second tier that would have a way to stay in the game and perhaps add depth to the national program.
“Now you have a roster of 25 players times eight or 12 teams, so now you’re building a culture top down,” Sherman said of the idea.
Carmelina Moscato — former Canadian midfielder, Olympic bronze medallist and current commissioner of semi-pro League1 Ontario — said Listro’s story is a common one, particularly among women playing overseas. “Without our own infrastructure … for the gaps that we’re experiencing as a country, I think we’re always going to be scratching our heads,” Moscato said.
Low-cost, strategic programming to help Canadian players navigate the pro soccer world and expand the national team pool would be a good place to start whenever the sport emerges from the pandemic, she added. It’s unclear, however, who would be responsible for making those decisions.
“It becomes this (area where) no one’s doing it and then it doesn’t get done,” Moscato said.
At League1, she says she’s working on improving technical and coaching standards and compiling data for each player, with the bills paid in full by the clubs — 13 on the women’s side.
“We want a professional experience in an amateur league,” Moscato said.
While waiting for the next NWSL season, Listro is optimistic she did enough this fall with the Pride to earn a contract. And while she believes the Canadian national team program should improve its scouting practices — to keep up with every elite player, not just the ones in the pipeline from a young age — she still hopes to earn a senior camp invite one day.
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do since I was five years. I’ve dreamed of being on the national team.”