Buchanan is calm before the storm
Canadian defender ‘ super excited’ to get tournament underway
Talk about pressure. At age 19, standout centre back Kadeisha Buchanan has emerged as a fixture on the Canadian national soccer squad’s backline.
Head coach John Herdman even calls her “the Christine Sinclair of defenders,” with an innate ability to remain calm when everything around her seems to be spiralling out of control. High praise, indeed. But does it put the Toronto native a little on edge as she approaches her first FIFA Women’s World Cup?
“I feel quite calm about everything,” Buchanan said in an interview. “Maybe I’ll be a little nervous when we start playing that first game ( against China), but I don’t really get nervous that often. I’m actually super excited and just want to get on with it.”
The two- time Canadian under20 Player of the Year made her senior national team debut when she was just 17 years old in January 2013 and hasn’t looked back, collecting 35 caps and 32 starts along the way.
Herdman clearly remembers the moment during the 2013 Cyprus Cup tournament when he knew he had a special player on his hands. A long ball had dropped over Buchanan’s head and an opposing forward was closing in quickly.
“A typical Canadian forward in that situation would have just cleared the ball into row Z,” Herdman said. “She clipped the ball back over the other girl’s head and, under immense pressure with her back to goal, she gets to the ball on the other side ( of the opposing player) and off she goes.
“I just went: ‘ Wow. That’s the change this country needs.’”
Buchanan, “Keisha” to her teammates, grew up in a single- parent family where she was the youngest of seven kids — all girls — that lived in some of Toronto’s tougher neighbourhoods. She said having six older sisters made her “tougher, stronger and smarter,” and soccer kept her focused on something positive.
“Soccer was definitely my backbone, if anything could be when you move around from place to place in different parts of the city,” Buchanan said. “I could only relate to my teammates. It didn’t matter where I moved, soccer was always there and I was always around the same people.”
She said her mom, Melslaide Tate, did everything she could to support her passion for the sport.
“It was hard and tough but she saw the passion I had for the game and invested more time in me,” Buchanan said.
The young soccer phenom spent eight years with Brams United SC in Brampton, where she played alongside good friend and fellow national team player Ashley Lawrence.
The pair play together for the West Virginia University Mountaineers, where Buchanan has been named the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year the past two seasons.
WVU head coach Nikki Izzo-Brown said Buchanan’s strength comes from her “unbelievable” passion for the game on and off the field. She doesn’t captain the Mountaineers squad but she is definitely a team leader.
“She is so respectful of others that I can see where she doesn’t want to step on anyone’s feet,” Izzo- Brown said in an interview. “But she commands a lot of respect because of her work rate and ability to play.”
She said Buchanan isn’t as shy as many people think, noting she dances a mean Nae Nae and loves playing with Izzo- Brown’s young children.
“She’s 19 years old and she has this way about her that brings out the best in people, in a youthful way,” Izzo- Brown said. “She plays like she’s been well groomed in the game for 25 years, with a composure you usually only find in older players.”
Buchanan won’t credit just one or two particular coaches or mentors for helping her achieve her goals in the beautiful game, saying it was “definitely a collective thing.”
“When they say it takes a village to raise a child, it literally took teammates, parents and the whole Brams United family, who really helped my mom and my family,” she said. “I can’t pinpoint just one or two people. It’s more like 50.”
Buchanan has experienced considerable success when marking some of the world’s best strikers and says there’s no real secret in how to counter the speed of an Alex Morgan or the grit and wile of an Abby Wambach.
“It’s all about mental readiness and reacting quickly to different situations,” she said. “Your visual awareness really has to be up there.”
With nearly two- and- a- half years’ experience on the senior national team, Buchanan feels ready to take more of a leadership role on a squad in which she’s still considered part of a youth movement.
“At first, it was all about me learning from other players and seeing how the team works and understanding the dynamics behind the team,” she said. “But I feel I have enough caps to have gained more confidence and hopefully others can learn from me now so there’s more give and take.”
Buchanan said she’s absolutely ready for the big show and for any increase in fame and popularity that will surely come her way if she plays a key role on a Canadian team that makes a deep World Cup run.
“It won’t go to my head and I won’t become full of myself,” she said emphatically. “I know where I came from and I know who I am.”
It’s all about mental readiness and reacting quickly to different situations. Your visual awareness really has to be up there.