While Casey Stoney is the fourth woman to serve as head coach of Canada's women's soccer team, the country has only had one Canadian female head coach. Sylvie Béliveau served in the role from 1993 to 1995.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
Despite all the milestones achieved by Canadian women’s soccer in the past few years, one thing has been sorely missing, and that is the development of female coaching talent in this country.
The 2021 Olympic gold success can’t disguise the fact that the Canadian women’s national team has only had one female Canadian coach in the program’s history – Sylvie Béliveau – and that was more than 30 years ago. And while last year’s launch of the Northern Super League was a watershed moment for women’s soccer here, none of the six franchises has a Canadian woman in the dugout.
But with last year’s launch of Canada Soccer’s Women and Girls Strategy, the hope is for change in that department, and Thursday’s $1.5-million philanthropic donation from ScotiaRise – Scotiabank’s community investment arm – should only help advance the cause.
“Right now, especially in the development of female Canadian coaches, the barriers are both financial and structural, and … we see some intersection, too, with caregiving realities,” said Samantha Rogers, vice-president, philanthropy for Canada Soccer.
“And so for us to be able to identify that and then make an investment to remove these barriers is incredibly important for us.”
Canada's women's program has had tremendous success on the field in recent years, including its 2021 Olympic gold medal, but has lagged behind in developing female coaches.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
The donation to the Canada Soccer Foundation will be allocated to three areas of concern: advancing women in high-performance coaching with financial assistance and mentorship; retaining mothers in elite coaching environments through child subsidies and travel support; and creating a paid internship program.
“Our support of the Canada Soccer Foundation will connect women to important financial and childcare support, and provide mentorship opportunities, that will help women build and advance their professional careers,” said Meigan Terry, Scotiabank’s executive vice-president and chief global corporate and public affairs officer, in a statement.
For Canada Soccer, now is the perfect time to capitalize on the momentum surrounding the sport. The men’s World Cup arrives on these shores in a little over three months and the women’s World Cup is next year in Brazil, while the Los Angeles Olympics are a little further over the horizon in 2028.
But success there and elsewhere will require investment, something that almost every national sports organization in this country is asking for more of. For Canada Soccer, philanthropy represents an important part of its overall funding, with the organization launching its Canada Rising campaign last September, which aims to raise $25-million by the end of 2027. Rogers says the campaign is over halfway to its goal in just over five months.
The success of last year’s Canadian women’s rugby team, which ran a crowd-funding campaign to raise $1-million ahead of finishing runner-up at the World Cup, helped to shine a light on these kinds of public initiatives, Rogers adds.
“Women’s rugby really caught the attention of the world,” she said. “And it’s been nice to see that there’s a shift also in recognizing that you can actually invest in sports in a really impactful way.”