YOUTH BOOSTS HOSTS
Women’s World Cup team led by two players who were teens when tournament began
Kadeisha Buchanan has been Canada’s best player in this Women’s World Cup.
Ashley Lawrence is in the conversation for second.
Buchanan is 19, and Lawrence turned 20 the day of the New Zealand game.
That Canada’s in a position to make a deep run in this tournament — thanks, in part, to a friendly knockout round quadrant — is not a surprise.
Winning Olympic bronze in London set those expectations — fair or not.
But if you’d told someone a couple of years ago that Canada would be in this position with a couple of kids leading the charge, well, you might have been asked if you’d been heading too many balls on a winter’s day.
Buchanan and Lawrence can’t continue to be the big story if this team’s going to reach the semifinal, or the final.
The usual suspects have to show up for the party, starting Sunday at B.C. Place when Canada hosts Switzerland in the round of 16.
Yet it’s been refreshing, and rather remarkable, to watch the rapid rise of these young players — and 17-year-old Jessie Fleming, too.
Not only do they seem undaunted by the stage; they’ve thrived.
Buchanan, a centre-back, has been a brick wall. Lawrence, a boxto-box midfielder, has been a pest, and scored a huge goal against the Netherlands. Too young to worry, perhaps. Certainly free from all that Canadian baggage coach John Herdman has worked so tirelessly to toss out since he took over in 2011.
“I thought I’d be nervous on the first day, my first World Cup,” said Buchanan. “But when the time came, I knew I was ready. I actually felt calm.
“That was the surprising part. I’ve waited my whole life for this. So to feel so calm has surprised me.”
That tells you all you need to know about her mental makeup. Lawrence’s confidence has shined through, too, and the two players couldn’t be happier to share this experience together.
They’ve been close for 10 years, more like sisters than friends, growing up outside Toronto. Both have Jamaican roots. Both attend West Virginia University, where they star for the Mountaineers.
Lawrence remembers the first time she met Buchanan. It was the first time she saw her play.
Buchanan’s mom had moved her seven girls from Jane and Finch — one of Toronto’s toughest neighbourhoods — to Brampton.
Buchanan was playing on a house league team for Brams United when Lawrence and her mom, a referee, caught a game.
Lawrence was already on the allstar squad at the club.
“She was amazing,” said Lawrence. “She dribbled (through) the whole team and we’re like, ‘Why is she not on our team?’ So we got in touch with the coach.
“It’s pretty cool to have someone by your side throughout this journey. To have that feeling that she’s been there — not only in soccer, but off the field. To have someone to talk to about anything.”
“Or to dance with,” Buchanan added.
They’ve injected this aging Canadian crew with youthful enthusiasm. Ability and athleticism, too. Canada still lags behind the top countries in that regard, but they are eminently more equipped to compete with the best with these two in the lineup.
We’re a year or so away from saying the same about Fleming, who could well start Sunday’s game too.
Herdman said after the Olympic bronze that Canada had to get its average age down.
“The magic number is 27, with a certain amount of international caps,” he said then.
or, “a legend in the game.”
“It’s a challenge for me not to be complacent,” said Buchanan.
Lawrence — who said she was “foaming at the mouth,” when her chance came to play hero the other night — has been more of a revelation at this World Cup because people knew less about her.
“She’s very fierce,” said Buchanan. “And she gets out of turns that normally there’s no way of getting out. She finds that exit path. It’s quite surreal how she does it. She amazes me every game.”
Having scored against the Dutch, Herdman has touted Lawrence as a player Switzerland must be wary of in Sunday’s do-or-die game.
He’s not afraid to push these two.
And even in front of 55,000, they’re not afraid of those expectations.
“We know our average age can’t be 29 or 30.”
And with a dearth of mid-20s talent — the result of too much coaching turnover and too little planning and vision — that meant finding teenagers and accelerating their growth.
“We’d just watched them win a bronze medal and then we were both in the team,” said Buchanan. “When we were called in we were both like, ‘Whaaaaat?’”
The secret’s been out on Buchanan for a while.
That’s what happens when you shut down Abby Wambach and score against the U.S. as an 18-yearold in front of 30,000 fans in Winnipeg.
And when your coach, repeatedly, calls you the “Christine Sinclair of defenders,” and a player who could be “the best defender in the world,”