World-class talents, despite their youth
Kadeisha Buchanan, Ashley Lawrence, Jessie Fleming have stepped up for Canada
Heading into the Women’s World Cup, there was a perception that the tournament marked the last hurrah for this edition of the national team; that Canada’s best-ever generation of players had reached its expiry date and the program was facing a comprehensive rebuild, along with an uncertain future.
Funny how that perception can change in the space of a fortnight.
While the more familiar names remain on the back nine of their careers, this World Cup has introduced the country to an exciting group of players who will form the core of the national team for the next 10 to 15 years.
Prior to the WWC, Kadeisha Buchanan, Ashley Lawrence and Jessie Fleming may have been known in the narrow world of the women’s game, but didn’t exactly suffer from over-exposure in the rest of Canada.
Now, with the team preparing for Saturday’s quarter-final match against England, Buchanan and Lawrence have announced themselves to the world while Fleming has established herself as a valuable substitute.
This would be a happy development under any circumstances, but it’s the birth certificates of the three players that have caused the real buzz. Buchanan, who may be Canada’s best player, is 19; Lawrence, who scored against the Netherlands in Canada’s group-clinching 1-1 tie, just turned 20; Fleming is 17.
Get used to those names. It seems they’re going to be around for a while.
“To go out in front of that sort of atmosphere, you either sink or swim,” Canadian head coach John Herdman said after the tie against the Netherlands. “Those girls are swimming. It’s lovely to see. “That’s the future on display.” And that future suddenly looks very bright.
At WWC 2015, Buchanan, Lawrence, Fleming and others have infused the national team program with a vitality and energy that has been missing for too long. At the 2002 World U19 championship, the host Canadians advanced to the gold-medal game with a team built around Christine Sinclair and a lineup that featured goalkeeper Erin McLeod, defender Carmelina Moscato and others who would form the core of the program through two Olympics and three World Cups.
That team, of course, peaked in London at the 2012 Olympics by winning a bronze medal after an epic 4-3 loss to the United States in a semifinal.
But three years later it was starting to show liver spots before Buchanan and her colleagues changed the look and feel of the program.
From a Canadian point of view, the timing couldn’t be better, but the emergence of this group raises a couple of interesting questions — namely, how did it happen so quickly and who should get the credit for it?
As it happens, you don’t have to look very far to find a familiar face in the middle of all this.
Herdman took over the women’s program following the 0-3 debacle at the 2011 World Cup and, in addition to rebuilding the national team, helped install an elite developmental stream that is just now starting to churn out players. Its cornerstone is the Excel Program, which identifies and moulds the country’s best young players in an intensive, year-round training environment.
There are currently three such REX (Regional Excel; at least we lead the world in acronyms) centres in Canada: Vancouver, which is underwritten by the Whitecaps; Montreal and Halifax; all of which are aligned with Herdman’s curriculum.
“Everything we do, from sports scientists to nutritionists, is the same philosophy as the women’s national team,” says Bev Priestman, one of the program’s directors.
“That’s the key,” Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi says. “You connect with your best young prospects and provide them with the opportunities.
“Christine, for the most part, got there on her own. Sure, she had some good coaches along the way, but the system was lacking.”
Critics maintain that system still needs work and its real impact won’t be felt until 2020. But, historically, the Canadian Soccer Association has also been blistered for its lack of vision and inability to develop players (see the men’s national team). Could it be they’re finally on to something?
Buchanan and Lawrence, for example, grew up playing together in the Greater Toronto Area, enrolled in the Canadian youth program at 14; played in the World U17s and U20s, where Buchanan was an allstar last year. They also made their debuts with the Canadian national team when they were 17.
Fleming, meanwhile, is three years younger and the first real graduate of Herdman’s program to make the national team. She also played with Lawrence and Buchanan in the U20s in Canada last year.
Now they’re playing in front of the world, and the world has noticed.
“This tournament is just so big on so many levels,” Lenarduzzi says. “I just feel like there are so many young women who’ll be exposed to the fact they’re heroes. It will stimulate a generation. From this there will be a legacy of opportunity.”
Which might not be the traditional legacy of bricks and mortar, but will be more valuable in the long run.
ewilles@theprovince.com twitter.com/willesonsports