By Adam Beauchemin
One of many local players who have recently worn the maple leaf in international soccer competition, Annabelle Chukwu made her (perhaps overdue) on-field debut for the Canadian senior women’s national soccer team on Friday evening in Toronto.
Canada’s all-time leading scorer at the youth level helped launch a comeback from a 1-0 deficit when she entered for Evelyne Viens in the 63rd minute, turning the match into a 4-1 victory over Costa Rica in a friendly on June 27 at BMO Field.
Chukwu assisted on the winning goal by heading a cross back to Holly Ward and certainly didn’t look like a raw rookie in her first time on the pitch for the senior team.
The 18-year-old Ottawa South United product had previously been called into senior team camps on several occasions, including as a wide-eyed 15-year-old.
She remembers meeting the world’s all-time leading scorer Christine Sinclair on a flight. “She was like, ‘Hi, I’m Christine.’ And I’m like, ‘You don’t have to introduce yourself,’” Chukwu recalled.
Read More: Ottawa strikers Larisey, Chukwu take varied paths to Canadian senior women’s soccer team
Chukwu went on to surpass Sinclair’s goal-scoring record at the youth level, with 39 goals in 42 international appearances (ahead of Sinclair’s 27).
Her most recent highlight-reel marker for Canada came in the 122nd minute to give Canada a 3-2 extra-time victory over Mexico at June’s Concacaf Women’s Under-20 Championship in Costa Rica.
Canadian senior women’s national team coach Casey Stoney has of course long had her eye on Chukwu, but told OneSoccer that “there’s been a very clear, conscious and intentional plan around when to involve her.”
“We feel like this is the right time and we feel like this is the right time when she’s ready to perform,” she explained before the match. “I think she’s incredibly technically gifted. She’s unplayable at times. When you see her receiving with her back to goal and she can turn to face people and she can beat them 1v1, and she can score goals.
“That talent level is quite rare, so we want to make sure that we harness it, that we look after her as a person and as a player and we want her in this senior camp. We thought it was the right time to bring her in and we’re hearing it’s the right time to get her on the field and we’re looking forward to working with her.”
At the Concacaf U20 event, Chukwu added five goals to her total over the course of the tournament, as Canada posted four wins, including a 1-0 semifinal win over USA, and one loss, which came against Mexico in the round-robin.
Teammate Teegan Melenhorst, an Ottawa TFC product, scored two goals for Canada as well.
Teegan’s older sister Keera also wore the maple leaf recently, although that opportunity came on the floor instead of the grass.
Keera was one of two athletes from Ottawa who are leading the way for the growing 4v4 futsal hard-floored soccer format.
Melenhorst and Sadie Sider-Echenberg helped lead Canada to a first-place finish in the inaugural Concacaf Women’s Futsal Championships in Guatemala earlier this spring, earning the team a spot at the first-ever FIFA Futsal World Cup in the Philippines this fall.
Both players were very new to the sport of futsal prior to the tournament.
“I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d never played in an official match,” recounted Melenhorst, a 22-year-old Nepean High School grad who attended the University of Oklahoma for one year before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh for the remainder of her collegiate career.
“It’s something exciting and cool for Canada as a soccer and a futsal country,” Sider-Echenberg said of the opportunity for the Canadian women to compete internationally.
The Canadians placed first among nine teams after a decisive 8-2 victory over Panama, a feat that is made all the more remarkable when considering that this was the team’s international debut.
“Our first game ever, as a program, was the first game of the tournament, and I know some of the other teams had played international friendlies before,” noted Sider-Echenberg, who’s entering her final year of eligibility at the University of Southern Florida in the U.S.
Sider-Echenber, 21, attended the Glebe Collegiate Institute in Ottawa and spent time with the University of Ottawa before transferring to the University of Southern Florida in 2023.
While the Canadians lost their first game of the tournament, it was a close 3-2 battle against the top-rated Costa Rican team. After that, the team won four straight to secure their spot atop the field.
The highlight of the tournament for both Melenhorst and Sider-Echenberg was their narrow victory over Mexico.
“We were down 3-0 going into the second-half, and [the half] is 20 minutes so it goes by quick,” recounted Melenhorst, a former West Ottawa Warrior.
“We scored three goals in four minutes – that doesn’t really happen in soccer,” continued Sider-Echenberg, a Futuro Academy product.
The Canadians eventually won the match in a penalty shootout, earning themselves one of two tournament spots in the FIFA World Cup.
“It was pretty special,” Sider-Echenberg underlined.
Despite having their ticket to the World Cup punched, the team didn’t let off the gas and secured their place at the top of the tournament bracket with their final victory over Panama.
Sider-Echenberg was spotted by Canadian women’s futsal team head coach Alexandre Da Rocha while playing in a friendly match between the University of Southern Florida and his Université du Québec à Montréal team.
“He introduced himself to our coaches. And he was like ‘I just got appointed head coach of the women’s national futsal team in January, we’re starting to program, do you have any Canadians?’”
Next thing Sider-Echenberg knew she was being invited to their tryout camp in March, alongside Melenhorst whom she knew from the soccer community in Ottawa.
The group of 30 invitees was trimmed down to a final 14-player roster, and the squad was off to Guatemala at the end of April.
“It was such a collective effort, that was really cool to be a part of it,” Sider Echenberg said, adding that the small 14-player roster — which is nearly half the size of a regular soccer roster — allowed the team to form a tight bond.
“It was a really close group and everyone was really important,” she added.
“The bond we had within the girls and the belief within the team and from the coaching staff is what I think made us as successful as we were,” echoed Melenhorst.
ROOM TO GROW
With winter forcing play inside for much of the year in Canada, futsal could be a discipline well-suited for canucks, and both Melenhorst and Sider-Echenberg note that the speed of the game makes for exciting matches.
“It’s just super fun. It’s 4v4, so you obviously get to touch the ball a lot,” Melenhorst highlighted. “You’re always super involved in the play, which with 11 per side, is not always the case.”
Much like another well-known Canadian winter sport, line switches are made on the fly, with shifts typically only one to two minutes.
“I grew up playing hockey and it kind of reminded me of that in a way with the line changes and the shifts,” Melenhorst indicated.
While the sport is growing, both athletes think there is more room for it to take off, especially in Canada where soccer players are forced to play indoors for much of the year.
“I’m amazed that it’s not bigger,” Sider-Echenberg said. “I think now, hopefully we can be part of making it bigger because it’s so hard to play soccer in the winter.”
“The men have had three Futsal World Cups and this is the first year that there’s a women’s one, so I think it’ll help grow the game,” Melenhorst noted.
While both players say they plan to continue playing futsal in the future, their shorter-term goal is to find a landing spot to play soccer professionally.
Melenhorst, who graduated earlier this month, is working with an agent to find a club to play with in Europe. Sider-Echenberg — who already played one season of professional soccer with Le Havre AC in France in 2023 — has one final semester and one final season of college soccer to complete this fall. After that, she also intends to turn her attention to finding a professional club to join.
– with files from Dan Plouffe & Martin Cleary