This is the speech I gave at the induction ceremony for three Blue Mountain girls soccer teams into the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame:
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| The Blue Mountain Royals celebrating being named Outstanding Team at the 1982 Sun Cup of Soccer Champions. This photo sits on my bookshelf in my office and it inspired me to gather my memories, make my soccer video detailing the early days of girls' soccer in BC, and nominate the three Blue Mountain teams for the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame. |
Hello everyone!
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Anne
Russell and I was a proud member of the Blue Mountain Royals soccer team from
1975 to 1984. I still consider myself a Royal today and enjoyed a great reunion
with my fellow players, our coach Dean McInnes, and several of the team parents
on Sunday.
I am also a friend and admirer of the two other Blue
Mountain teams being honoured tonight. We played the Devils on an exhibition
basis many times and then in league play during their final U-18 year. We looked
up to the Rangers as the senior team in our club.
Forty years ago, I was, to quote Cyndi Lauper, just a
girl who wanted to have fun. I loved kicking the soccer ball around in the
backyard with my four brothers, and would take it out to the fields at Lord
Baden Powell elementary, just behind my house, and kick it against the backstop
of the ball diamond. When I got a little older, I would illegally climb the
fence into the school courtyard and kick it against the wall there. You just
couldn’t stop me!
I would go to my brothers’ games, and watch from the
sidelines as they played, and wonder why I couldn’t play on a team too! I was
told that girls didn’t play soccer, that there were no organized teams. I
didn’t know then that the English Football Association had banned the growing
sport of women’s soccer in the 1920s – a ban that was not lifted until the
1970s and that spilled over into Canada in the chilling effect that it had on
the development of the women’s game.
Then, in 1975, I heard that my friend Kerry Rupert WAS
playing on a team, and that girls soccer had started up. I eagerly informed
that my parents that there WAS a team and I wanted to join it! Thus I became a
Blue Mountain Royal! Thanks Kerry!
I was overjoyed to be playing with my new friends on a
real team and travelling to Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, and Burnaby to take on
other teams. We’d also play against the other Coquitlam clubs: Bel Air and Cape
Horn. Along with the Blue Mountain club, they were the precursors to today’s
Coquitlam Metro Ford Soccer Club. In the first game I remember playing as a
nine-year-old we took on the Port Moody Sparks, and were bowled over by a tiny
dynamo forward named Tina Pavan, who would join our team in her teens.
For the next few years we developed our soccer skills
and grew as a team. Under the guidance of coaches Dean McInnes and Peter Van
Hulsen, we learned the finer points of the game and became very successful in
the win-loss margin. But we also learned to play with character, to always be
good sports, and to treat our opponents with respect. Jim Gray and Cam
Barnetson were working similar miracles with the Devils and the Rangers.
We were also proving that girls COULD play soccer. One
year, we travelled to Pitt Meadows for the Hammond Days festival to put on a
demonstration of the game before there was any organized soccer in Pitt Meadows
or Maple Ridge. A decade later, current national team goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc
would start her youth soccer career in a Maple Ridge club.
In 1973, there were only three girls soccer clubs across
British Columbia. By 1980, there were 317 teams. In 2002, there were more than
307,000 women and girls playing nationally.
So by the early 1980s, girls were playing the game,
and playing it well. There was even a championship tournament for girls started
in the late 1970s that the Devils and Rangers qualified for.
But the pinnacle of amateur sport… the Sun Tournament of
Soccer Champions … sponsored by the
Vancouver Sun newspaper, eluded us.
Soccer was B.C.’s most high-profile amateur sport from the
1950s through the 1980s and beyond.
Boys who got to play in this elite Sun Cup tournament, which
pitted the two best teams in the coastal region against each other, played in
Swangard Stadium — a real stadium! They were marched in by bagpipes in a parade
of champions, had their games covered by real newspaper and TV reporters, and
the Sun Soccer Boy and his runner up were featured in the Vancouver Sun.
But for the first few years of organized girls soccer in
B.C., girls were not allowed to play in the Sun Cup.
Then, in 1981, more enlightened minds prevailed. It was the
girls’ turn to play at Swangard, with a parade, bagpipes, an announcer calling
out their names, an allstar team, and a Sun Soccer Girl and Runner Up being
featured on the front page of the Vancouver Sun sports section.
In a happy coincidence that highlights what a hotbed of
soccer Coquitlam was, three teams from the Blue Mountain Club — teams that are
being honoured tonight — The Royals, The Devils, and The Rangers — qualified
for the inaugural Sun Cup for Girls.
Those same three teams emerged victorious in the top three
age groups at the first Sun Cup, which also served as the provincial
championship at that time.
The Sun Soccer Girl was Jane Norman of the Blue Mountain
Rangers. Soccer Girl Runner Up was Karen Daws of the Blue Mountain Royals.
Fully half the allstar team was from Blue Mountain. And the
Rangers were named Outstanding Team of the tournament.
Girls soccer had truly arrived and Coquitlam’s Blue Mountain
club was leading the way!
It was a moment of immense pride for our teams, our families,
and our community.
One local sports writer, the late Norm Wright, said it was
seeing our team play that convinced him that girls and soccer belonged
together. In fact I think it was that speedy little forward Tina Pavan who convinced
him.
My team, the Royals, returned to the Sun Cup in 1982, winning
again. We went on to be Western Canadian champions and placed second in Canada.
One of our members, Brenda Yamamoto, was named Sun Soccer Girl Runner Up and
others were allstars.
It was a thrill, but nothing matched the thrill of that first
Sun Cup when Coquitlam girls proved that we deserved the same respect on the
turf as the boys did.
There were direct connections between our pioneer soccer
community and the early days of the national team. Someone we played against
regularly, Geri Donnelly of the Port Moody Flames, went on to join Canada’s
first rag-tag version of a women’s national team in 1986. She scored Canada’s
first and second goals ever. I played on a summer team with her that same year.
Local Coquitlam girl Cathy Ross was also an early national team member.
Someone who played with us as a Royal in our last two years –
Linda Petrasch (now Linda Milani), also played for the national team for a
couple of the early years. Both of these
women were honored as national team alumni at a recent ceremony before a World
Cup game.
Some key national team members reaped the benefits of a
vibrant girls’ soccer scene in BC that we helped to create.
Christine
Sinclair, Canada’s current captain, wouldn’t be born until a couple of years
after that first Sun Cup, but she went on to play in its successor, the Coastal
Cup, in her formative years. My brother- and sister-in-law coached against her
when she was a young teen and remember her as a phenomenon even then.
Other current and former national team members, including
Abbotsford’s Sophie Schmidt, got their start in the girl’s soccer system that
we pioneers helped to build.
In my lifetime I have witnessed huge growth of girls
soccer, the start of rep teams, elite teams, school teams, university teams,
and the launch of the women’s national team.
So yes, I will be extremely proud when I join 50,000 other
fans to watch Canada against Switzerland in BC Place on Sunday and when that
same venue hosts the World Cup final on July 5. When I was at the U.S. game on
Tuesday I thought back to those early international soccer exchanges we had
with Seattle teams and reflected that I never imagined it would come to this.
But I am most proud of the equity achieved in
Canadian soccer: unlike when I was a little girl watching my brothers from the
sidelines: my daughters and my son have the same opportunities to play, ref,
and coach with our club, the Chilliwack FC. And they take advantage of it.
And there’s another legacy: lots of women playing
through their 30s, 40s, 50s or until their knees give out, whichever comes
first. Yes, I’m still playing recreational soccer at age 49. I’m no
superstar and probably wouldn’t even make the rep team if I was playing as a
girl today, but I play in a recreational league my friends and I organized for
women over 30. I scored six goals this season! We now have 12 teams and more
than 160 players coming out two nights a week in Chilliwack. We are all
enjoying the personal empowerment, bonding, commitment to fitness and community
building that comes with that.
I want to give a huge shout out to my coaches when I
was a girl – Dean McInnes and the late Peter Van Hulsen gave us the skills to
play soccer, but also emphasized sportsmanship, integrity, and camaraderie. And
we girls were bonded for life as a result. I know that Jim Gray and Cam
Barnetson instilled similar values with their teams.
We learned a lot from winning, but also from our
occasional big losses. Ironically, we ended the youth careers of our older rivals,
the Devils, in playoff action in 1983, and then were eliminated ourselves by
the younger Willingdon Dirty Dozen a year later in 1984. Character-building
experiences all!
I just want to take a moment to recognize that not all
the legends of the Blue Mountain Club of the 1980s could join us tonight. We’ve
lost some good ones along the way, including Rangers coach Cam Barnetson,
Royals assistant coach Peter Van Hulsen, parents from various teams, and the
first Sun Soccer Girl, the late and great Jane Norman.
I made a soccer video detailing the history of all
this as an assignment for university course in digital storytelling that I
took. As I approach a half century in age and watch some of my friends pass
away, it hits home that nobody can tell your story as well as you can, so if
you want to make sure your story is told, then make sure you tell it. The video
now has more than 1,400 views on Youtube. It’s called Pioneer Girls of the BC
Soccer World if you want to look it up.
I am so honoured to be here tonight being recognized
with the rest of you. Forty years later, girls still just wanna have fun. And
they are!
Thank you to the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame for
this wonderful recognition. Thank you, Royals, Devils, and Rangers, for paving
the way for the soccer girls of today. And thank you to the adults of the
previous generation for having the foresight to let the little girls join their
brothers on the pitch and play!
