Injured Canadian ‘keeper Erin McLeod hopes to inspire other with Motive Nation

Erin McLeod knows watching the Olympics won’t be easy.

The injured goalkeeper will be cheering her Canadian teammates on from Sweden, where she and wife Ella Masar McLeod play their club soccer.

“If I’m being honest, I think it’ll be challenging,” McLeod said of watching from afar.

McLeod, who has won 115 caps for Canada, was in Vancouver recently and got a chance to speak to the team.

“I was probably one of the hardest things but one of the things that I really needed to do,” she said in an interview from Wisconsin. “I needed them to know how important they were to me and how hard it will be for me not to be there.

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“But they’re such an exciting team in the direction they’re going. Even watching them play against France (in a recent 1-0 loss), they’re a solid team and I told them when I was there, this is the team that I’ve been waiting for. It gives me more reason and purpose to get back and it’s a good opportunity for Steph (Labbe) and the other ‘keepers to grow. I know that’s part of making a team better.

“So yes, I’ll be cheering from afar and it will be difficult, of course. But if anyone’s ever seen me watch a Canadian soccer game from the side or on TV, I’m there whether I’m physically there or not, I’m in it.” 

The 33-year-old Albertan, a world-class goalkeeper with 43 international shutouts, underwent surgery — her third — on her right knee some three months ago.

The knee is doing fine after an operation in Sweden that saw a sliver of her kneecap inserted into a hole in her tibia from a previous surgery and a small strip of quadricep used as her new anterior cruciate ligament. An extra ligament, from a cadaver, was also inserted. 

McLeod, who also had surgery on her right knee in 2008 and 2010, says the recovery is going well. She is in the gym every day and has been working with a movement specialist in Vancouver. Her hope is to start kicking a ball in December and be back playing in February or March.

She says some questioned whether she would keep playing.

“It’s funny just because I never really thought I wouldn’t. Why wouldn’t I come back?”

The latest injury happened in stages, starting in December when she suffered ligament damage playing at a tournament in Brazil. Nevertheless a strapped-up McLeod played in the CONCACAF Olympic qualifier in February in Houston, where she felt something go warming up before a key contest against Costa Rica.

She left the warmup early, had the knee taped and played the game, helping Canada qualify for the Olympics with a 3-1 semifinal win.

“The next day my knee was really swollen. I knew something wasn’t right.”

She went back to Sweden, only to see the knee collapse after kicking a ball playing for FC Rosengard’s against FFC Frankfurt in a UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-final.

“I just felt my whole knee give out,” she said.

The surgeon later told her the ACL likely had been torn prior to the Costa Rica game.

In typical McLeod fashion, she sees a silver lining to her setback.

“I feel lucky, in a sense, because I feel like every time athletes or people get taken away from what they love they learn a lot about themselves and I’m doing that.”

Part of that learning is understanding that she will have to do things differently when she returns to action to avoid a repeat of the injury. “I’m not going to do another surgery,” she says with finality.

McLeod, who divides her time between Malmo and North Vancouver, has been keeping busy away from rehab.

As co-founder of Peau de Loup, she is involved in women’s clothing. She continues as an artist and has been taking university course on entrepreneurship and business 

Her latest project is Motive Nation, with Peau de Loup partner Adelle Renaud.

In a video, McLeod explains how the idea came about after her latest injury: “I shut the world out for a while, heartbroken that I would be missing the next Olympics. Then unexpectedly I started getting emails from friends, teammates, family and people I have never met about their personal stories of defeat, despair, courage and determination. Not only was it inspiring, it made me realize how people are willing to connect and help each other when given the chance.”

Drawing on the wisdom of others including athletes, they designed a series of T-shirts with motivational sayings. Starting in August with Paralympian swimmer Benoit Huot — whose quote is “Never give up on your dreams” — they will feature one athlete a month with half of the profits from his T-shirt going back to the athlete and half to a charity of the athlete’s choice.

McLeod hopes to turn the website — www.themotivenation.ca — into a multimedia community for motivation. 

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Neil Davidson, The Canadian Press