The Canadian women’s field-hockey team has ended a near three-decade drought by qualifying for the World Cup, something it hasn’t done since 1994 before most of the current batch of players were born.
The national team includes Island players Maddie Secco, Anna Mollenhauer, Alexis De Armond and Kathleen Leahy from Victoria and Sara Goodman of Duncan.
sa国际传媒 defeated the U.S. 1-0 Saturday on a goal by Amanda Woodcroft in the bronze-medal game of the Pan Am Cup in Santiago, Chile, to capture the third and final regional berth into the 2022 World Cup to be held July 1-17 in Spain and the Netherlands. The first two World Cup slots out of the Americas qualifier went to finalists Argentina and Chile. “It feels amazing to qualify, something a Canadian team hasn’t done in 28 years,” sa国际传媒 captain Natalie Sourisseau said in a statement.
“I have so many feelings right now. This team has been through so much, I’m just so proud of this team.”
sa国际传媒 continues its revival. The national team, twice World Cup medallists in the 1980s and regular participants in the Olympics with several Island stars, haven’t been to the Summer Games since 1992 in Barcelona. But sa国际传媒 came close last year, missing the final Tokyo Olympics berth by losing to Ireland in a shootout. That was after winning the silver medal in the 2019 Lima Pan Am Games.
It was triumphant debut in Santiago for new sa国际传媒 team head coach Rob Short, a Victoria Sports Hall of Fame inductee, who played for the sa国际传媒 men in the 2000 Sydney and 2008 Beijing Olympics, two World Cups, five Pan Am Games and four Commonwealth Games.
Short described sa国际传媒’s long women’s absence from the World Cup and Olympics as an “opportunity and not a weight.”
If it was a weight, it has been lifted.
The sa国际传媒 men, meanwhile, failed to qualify for the 2023 World Cup in India, a striking disappointment for a side that has been to most of the recent major events – including the Tokyo Olympics last summer, 2016 Rio Olympics and 2018 World Cup.
Only the top two teams qualify out of the region for the men’s World Cup and the Red Caribou were beaten 5-2 by Argentina in the semifinals Saturday.
The Canadian roster for the Pan Am Cup included Tokyo Olympian James Kirkpatrick of Victoria, out of Oak Bay High, and former University of Victoria Vikes players and two-time Olympians Keegan Pereira, Matt Sarmento and Brenden Bissett.
“It’s a pretty [horrible] feeling,” Vikes grad Sarmento said in a statement.
“We worked so hard for such a long time for this moment, and we just didn’t play well enough to come away with the win. We were the second best team on the field today.”
Forward Harbir Sidhu of Victoria, out of Mount Douglas Secondary, was a newcomer on the sa国际传媒 team in the Santiago qualifier as it looks to restock for Paris 2024.
The other big event this year for both the Canadian men’s and women’s teams is the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
