Determined Wilkinson refused to give up on sport dreams

Even when she was a youngster, soccer defeat left a bitter taste

MONTREAL — How competitive is Team Canada soccer player Rhian Wilkinson?

When she was five or six years old, playing for a Montreal-area team called the Strawberries, they lost a championship game to the Avocados. After that, she refused to eat avocados.

“I refused to eat avocados until I was 25 years old,” Wilkinson told Montreal filmmaker Bobbi Jo Hart, who made a documentary about Team Canada’s journey to the FIFA Women’s World Cup titled RISE.

Wilkinson then added: “Now I regret those years of deliciousness that I missed out on.”

“That’s true,” Wilkinson’s mother, Shan Evans, recalled Wednesday night from her home in the Montreal suburb of Baie-d’Urfé. “There was a girl on that team named Emily … she was a lot bigger than Rhian, so we called them the dreaded Avocados. In those days, we didn’t eat too many avocados.”

How determined is Rhian Wilkinson?

She didn’t let getting cut once from her high school team at Villa Maria, or being cut by the Lakeshore Lakers inter-city team the first time she tried out, stop her from living her soccer dream.

“She likes to tell kids that you just got to keep on keeping on,” Evans said about her now 33-year-old daughter. “If you want it hard enough, you’ll get there.”

Wilkinson attended Dorset Elementary School in Baied’ Urfé and as a 12-year-old wrote in her yearbook that her ambition was to be a professional soccer player. But in an interview with the Montreal Gazette last year, Wilkinson said she never actually realized how good she was at soccer until she was offered a full scholarship at age 17 to the University of Tennessee, where she earned a degree in English.

Wilkinson made her debut with the national team as a 20-year-old in 2003 and last March became only the third woman to play in 150 games for Team Canada. She was hoping to make her 164th appearance Thursday night in Edmonton against New Zealand at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Wilkinson missed Canada’s opening game — a 1-0 win over China Saturday — while nursing a hamstring injury.

Canadian coach John Herdman said Wednesday Wilkinson was ready to play against New Zealand and would start the game on the bench.

Canada’s next game is Monday night in Montreal against the Netherlands, and Wilkinson’s twin sister, Sara — who lives in Vancouver, went to the game in Edmonton and is now at her mother’s home on the West Island. She purchased a block of 50 tickets for the game at Olympic Stadium for family and friends. They’re obviously hoping Rhian gets on the field.