Injuries don’t deter Iacchelli
Despite odds, Edmontonian makes national women’s team
First came the broken leg at age 12. Then Selenia Iacchelli broke her foot. Twice. Still not done, last year she broke her arm.
All the injuries came playing the game she loves: soccer.
“It’s been a long road for me; I’ve had some pretty bad injuries,” said Edmonton’s Iacchelli, who was just named to Canada’s national women’s team. “But I’m still here.” Is she ever. It was only last month that Iacchelli, who used her injury exiles to complete her Master’s degree in physio-therapy at the University of Alberta, learned she had made the Canadian women’s national team.
Asked to travel to Burnaby, B.C. — where the national team trains at the elite Fortius Sport and Health facility — for a two-week trial, national team head coach John Herdman obviously liked what he saw in the 27-yearold, whose long list of injuries had her flying well under the radar.
Drafted by the Western New York Flash, which play in the National Women’s Soccer League and whose season starts in March, Iacchelli, who also played a year in Italy, said being added to the national team’s roster was “a dream come true. To play for your country is very special.”
“Selenia is very intelligent; her soccer brain is very good,” said Rick Haxby, Iacchelli’s Edmonton Victoria coach. “I’ll probably be accused of being sexist, but she plays like a man. She’s got good size; she’s physical and she’s not afraid to put a foot into a tackle.”
Haxby said another of Iacchelli’s soccer gifts is her ability to open up defences. “Her long-range passing is very good. She can make 40- to 50-yard passes with a lot of bend. At the same time she has great ball skills and is very good in tight situations.”
In 2015, Edmonton will be one of six host Canadian cities for the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
“I’m extremely excited about that,” said Iacchelli. “It will be an amazing opportunity to promote soccer and the City of Edmonton. When Edmonton hosted the final of FIFA’s U-19 Women’s World Championship in 2002, it took soccer in Edmonton to another level.
“I’m sure the World Cup will do the same thing.”
“I have the most fun in life playing soccer. None of those injuries was going to stop me.
“There were a lot of doctor’s appointments. A lot of time off and then a lot of rehab.” Her first foot injury happened i n 2009 at the University of Nebraska, where she had earned a full scholarship after graduating from St. Francis Xavier high school.
Just over a year later, she broke the same left foot at a World Cup team camp in Norway.
The broken arm came last year when she was checked into the boards at Edmonton’s South Side Soccer Centre while playing for Edmonton Victoria. The latter injury occurred just before Iacchelli, a midfielder, was going to play in England for the Doncaster Rovers.
“It’s incredible, really, that with all injuries that she has had that she has made her way back onto the national women’s team at 27 years of age,” said Haxby.
“It just shows how mentally tough she is. She’s had some pretty bad injuries — injuries which would have stopped the average person. But then she has always played with a smile on her face.”
Iacchelli, who was named the most valuable player in the Alberta Major Soccer League in 2012, said she knew she had come from too far back to quit.
“I knew I wasn’t done. I love the game too much,” said Iacchelli, who was a member of the Canadian Under-20 teams from 2004-06 while playing in two U-20 World Cups — Thailand in 2004 and Russia in 2006.
“It just shows that no matter what happens — no matter how many injuries occur — anything is possible. You just have to keep fighting. If you work hard, you can follow your dreams.”
Iacchelli’s soccer dreams go back a long way.
“When I was about eight or nine years old, they asked in school what do you want to be when you grow up. I put down that I wanted to be a professional soccer player. By then, I had already been playing soccer for four or five years.
“I’ve always had the passion for soccer. I always loved it and I’ve never got sick of it.”