Beckie’s leaf is for one that left too early
Janine Beckie, who is starring for Canada at these Olympics, wasn’t born in Canada. She has never lived in Canada. And as a teenager, when she began playing for under-18 and under-20 teams in international play, she donned the jersey of her country of birth — the United States.
That only made sense. She grew up in Colorado and accepted an NCAA scholarship from Texas Tech.
“And what more of an American state is there than Texas?” Beckie was saying in a recent interview, before she and her teammates landed in Brazil for the Games.
To that end, there certainly isn’t a more American player on Canada’s women’s national soccer team than Beckie, a 21-year-old Olympic firsttimer who has scored three goals in the opening pair of victories. But Beckie is, let’s be totally clear, a passport-carrying Canadian — a dual citizen, to be precise, the daughter of two Canadian parents who both played varsity basketball at the University of Saskatchewan before decamping for the States so her father, Gary, could pursue a career in the oil and gas business.
It wasn’t long after that, though, that the family’s story took a tragic turn. Gary Beckie died of skin cancer when Janine was 8 years old, leaving her mother, Sheila, to raise Janine and her three older siblings.
“My mom had no job at the time. She had to get a job. She actually cleaned houses for a year,” said Beckie, her eyes welling.
“Then she went back to school, got her master’s degree in counselling and now has an amazing job at a high school that she’s very good at. She’s the most amazing person I’ve ever known . . .
“And I have a lot of who my dad was in me. He was very outgoing. Loved to be with people. Loved to be competitive and active. Hilarious, too — I don’t have as much of that as he did, which I wish I did . . . ”
She stopped speaking for a moment and swallowed hard.
“So wearing this jersey is very much an honour to represent my family and my late dad.”
She’s wearing it awfully well, displaying a knack for occupying the right place at the right time that only the most gifted strikers possess. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that she’s often being set up by the great Christine Sinclair.
But as Canada head coach John Herdman has said more than once before and during the Olympics, these Games are a sharing of the torch between the veteran contemporaries of the 32-year-old Sinclair and the influx of youth, Beckie included, that is heavily influencing the roster.
The commingling of generations — which Herdman said was strongly encouraged by a meeting with, of all people, Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, who stressed the importance of throwing rookies into the fire — could not be going more harmoniously.
Mind you, this is where the Olympic tournament turns tougher. Though Canada can win Group F with a victory or a draw against Germany on Tuesday (3 p.m. ET, Sportsnet), when they’ll play their final round-robin match in Brasilia, a group-stage win might not be the optimal result.
It would likely set up a singleelimination quarter-final match with world No. 3 France, a top medal contender, while a runner-up result in Group F would mean a likely meeting with No. 6 Sweden or No. 8 Brazil.
In any event, Canada, ranked No. 10, would have to win its quarterfinal tilt to keep alive the possibility of a rematch of one of the most memorable games played by Cana- da in any sport over the past generation — specifically, the national women’s team’s 4-3 loss to the world No. 1 U.S. team at the London Olympics, wherein Sinclair’s hat-trick heroics were marred by poor refereeing. Though Beckie was only a TV-enabled witness to that classic, she acknowledged there it would be an “interesting” experience should her adopted country face her homeland in the days to come.
“Playing for Canada has been fantastic — I hope to wear this jersey for another, hopefully, 10 years at least. But playing (the U.S.) would be an interesting feeling for me,” Beckie said.
“I have a few friends on the team that I grew up with. And I mean, America has a big place in my heart. It’s where I’ve grown up. It means a lot to me . . . But again — I feel a lot of pride in being Canadian, and I love to talk about it. And I would love the chance to step on the field against them.”