By Ottawa Sports Pages, for West Ottawa Soccer Club
Keera Melenhorst’s 23rd birthday has the makings to be the best one yet. That’s when the West Ottawa Warriors product will play her first professional soccer game back in her hometown, as her new Ottawa Rapid FC club takes on the Calgary Wild in their Northern Super League home opener Saturday at TD Place.
It won’t exactly represent the fulfillment of a lifelong dream – because there was no women’s pro soccer in Canada when she grew up – but she plans to fully savour the moment of being back in the place that built her.
Melenhorst played about every sport she could growing up in Westboro, though her chief three loves were hockey, gymnastics and soccer. Born into an ultra-athletic family, Melenhorst’s longing for competition stood out even as a little girl. Her parents, avid hockey and ringette players respectively, faced no resistance when it came to escorting her to team practices, while her younger sister has followed her onto national youth soccer teams.
Melenhorst attributes some share of her success to the sensibilities she absorbed from other sports. The speed and physicality of hockey proved the perfect primers for her approach in and around the central midfield, where she seldom shies away from a crunching tackle. To gymnastics, Melenhorst credits her uninterrupted ironwoman streak.
“I’m very fortunate to have never had any injuries, knock on wood,” she laughs. “I think now people are very inclined to kind of specialize in one sport at a very young age… but I think there’s many benefits to being a multi-sport athlete and just exposing your body to those different movements and environments.”
It was when a 12-year-old Melenhorst was selected as the lone girl from Ontario to represent Canada at the 2015 Danone Nations Cup that soccer won the battle for her sporting soul. Diana Matheson’s bronze medal-winning goal in 2012 also serves as a core memory.
“That point in my career was a turning point,” recalls Melenhorst, who also attended FIFA Women’s World Cup matches in Canada that summer. “This is something I want to pursue and work hard at and give everything.”
Melenhorst’s time at West Ottawa Soccer Club was integral to her journey, she reflects. Having followed her favourite coach Kwame Telemaque to WOSC in 2016, she hit the ground running in her new environment. The talented midfielder never lost her affinity for long, gruelling practice sessions. Melenhorst fondly remembers training for three hours a night, surrounded by all her best friends.
“Kwame created such a positive environment,” she remembers. “Those are still some of my best friends today.”
Always looking to identify new challenges for young Melenhorst, Telemaque allowed her to train with older age groups and alongside boys’ teams. She savoured the opportunity to bring herself just a little outside her comfort zone.
Kristina Kiss, who was a coach and leader while Melenhorst played with WOSC and now serves as the Rapid’s technical director, was another source of inspiration. The national team veteran coached Melenhorst and five Warriors teammates to victory at a 5v5 tournament in Toronto. The win bought them a trip to Barcelona, where they finished as runners-up at the Global Gatorade 5v5 Finals.
“Growing up here in Ottawa, there weren’t very many women’s national team players you could go watch. It was always like on TV, or from afar,” Melenhorst notes. “(Kiss) is obviously a super experienced player, and is also short – she’s my height, so I think we really clicked.”
Among the lessons the 5’3″ firecracker internalized in the Ottawa soccer community, it was one from Kiss that genuinely stuck with her. Excellence, Kiss implored, isn’t a practice in painstakingly elevating every facet of your game. Versatility is a virtue, but great players stay true to themselves. Melenhorst was taught to identify her best traits and offer them up on a silver platter.
“This is your identity,” Melenhorst summarizes. “When a coach looks at you and wants you on the field, they know they’re going to get this every time.”
In doing so, ironically enough, Melenhorst has become a more flexible player. Her knack for turning in tight pockets and her all-purpose unpredictability allow her to be deployed as a 6, 8 or a 10.
Being something of a manager’s dream, it’s no surprise that Melenhorst started nearly three quarters of her matches with the Oklahoma Sooners and Pittsburgh Panthers in NCAA university level.
Before then, she’d spent several years at the Canadian women’s team’s National Development Centre in Toronto after playing in the OPDL for the Warriors.
Melenhorst also appeared in all three of Canada’s matches at the 2022 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in Costa Rica and helped Canada qualify for the inaugural FIFA Futsal Women’s World Cup last year.
After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in civil engineering last spring, Melenhorst spoke to each Canadian team in advance of the debut Northern Super League season, but ultimately chose to follow what had been her childhood dream.
Absent a domestic league to aspire to, Melenhorst had always wanted to play professionally in Europe, so she elected to sign with Sweden’s Linköping FC, which was in the midst of a relegation battle. Melenhorst enjoyed her time with the last club in the Swedish Damallsvenskan to have never been relegated, though she wasn’t able to save them from dropping down.
“The way we played, we weren’t a relegation team but sometimes football happens that way,” she says.
Indeed, as one door closed, another sprung open on home soil. With a relegation clause written into her contract, Melenhorst was once again back in communication with NSL clubs. Kiss and Ottawa Rapid FC manager Katrine Pedersen each pitched her on a return home. The more Melenhorst considered it, the more the prospect of playing before friends and family proved difficult to resist.
After inking her contract in the winter and allowing a new dream to fester, Melenhorst landed with many friends on the roster as well. From a combination of Canadian youth national team programs and Ottawa osmosis, Melenhorst already knew roughly half of the players on the team.
Among them is goalkeeper Mollie Eriksson, who played under Kiss the last time the West Ottawa Warriors had a semi-pro team in League One Ontario. Coincidentally enough, Melenhorst will be playing in Rapid’s home opener on the same day at the same time as the Warriors new Quebec LS PRO team makes its home debut at 5 p.m. at Beckwith Park.
“That transition was very smooth,” Melenhorst says of her move to the Rapid. “I felt right at home. I kind of signed pretty late, only about a week before preseason was starting, but you know, I never felt like an outsider.”
She played the full 90 in her club debut on the road at Halifax on April 25 and is set to make her home debut on what happens to be her birthday.
“Hopefully we win, and then everyone will be in a great mood,” Melenhorst smiles.
Learn more about West Ottawa Soccer Club at WOSC.com.
