Soccer was a cherished family and community legacy for Amanda Oliver as she grew up in Newcastle during the Thatcher era.
“I would go and see Newcastle United\] play,” recalled the multi-hyphenate Canadian, grassroots coach and devoted [Vancouver Whitecaps supporter to MLSsoccer.com earlier this month, “and be there in the stands of the Gallowgate End with my dad, just soaking up all the good feels about what soccer did for all of us.
“You grow up in the UK, it's almost like a religion because, you know, you work hard all week; my dad worked in the mines, right? So it's like on the weekend, you lived for soccer. That was it. It's so much a part of my heritage and identity.”
Yet one key facet of the footballing experience was off-limits to Oliver and her fellow girls back then. As was long the case in so many countries where the sport was and is otherwise universal, organized play was considered simply too unladylike.
“I played a lot of street soccer,” she said, “but wasn't allowed to play soccer for a school team, or to play in any kind of league.”
Those experiences guide Oliver’s 9-to-5 career as a social worker with the British Columbia Ministry of Children and Family Development, as well as her life in soccer. She’s a member of the South Sisters and Rain City Brigade supporters groups, turning out at BC Place and Swangard Stadium to cheer on not only the Whitecaps, but also local supporter-owned League1 BC side TSS Rovers and the national teams when they hit town.
And, someday not too far down the road, one of Canada’s first-ever fully professional women’s teams, too.
Project 8: Canada’s first women’s pro league
That’s the plan being carried out by Stephanie Labbé, the gold medal-winning Canadian women’s national team goalkeeper who retired last year and took up the position of general manager of women’s soccer for VWFC. The Caps have signed on as a founding member of Project 8, a new league announced in December and slated to launch in 2025 with eight teams across Canada – not just the first women’s pro soccer division in the nation’s history, but its first women’s pro sports league of any kind.
