A Winnipeg soccer legend is returning home for her next chapter. Desiree Scott, a former member of the Canadian women\u2019s national team that won three Olympic medals, including gold in 2020, is taking the helm of FC Northwest, the club she used to play for as a youth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to come home. I haven\u2019t been at home for 20 plus years, so Winnipeg is a city that\u2019s near and dear to my heart,\u201d said Scott.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarly days, I\u2019ve always represented Winnipeg and my province, and spoken about how proud I am to come from there, and now to be able to come back 20 years later after my career and be able to continue to have that impact and be able to give back, that\u2019s always been a mantra of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janine Sonis, a former teammate of Scott\u2019s on the Canadian National Women\u2019s Soccer Team, said, \u201cDesi is Winnipeg through and through. It was never a doubt in my mind that she would end up back in Winnipeg when she was done with her career endeavors. So I know she\u2019s very excited, I\u2019m sure her family is very excited, and the whole city should be really glad that such an amazing person is coming back to represent the great city of Winnipeg.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Winnipeg native says she was looking for her next move after retiring from the game, so she reached out to her old club, FC Northwest, who were delighted to bring her on as director of technical development and initiatives. Now, she wants to use her new position to be a role model for young soccer players in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think through my play on-field I hope I\u2019ve inspired some people to get involved in the sport and stick with it, but I think when you have someone right in front of you day in and day out, eyes that you can see and have a conversation with, it just makes it more real,\u201d said Scott.<\/p>\n
Austin Benevides, FC Northwest\u2019s club coordinator, added, \u201cObviously, Valour FC has shut down on the boys\u2019 side, and then previous years, the U of W girls program shut down, so the pathway has kind of become more difficult, and I think with Desiree here, it kind of opens up the door for potential opportunities to continue to develop after their youth careers are over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott is now in the process of moving back to town from Ottawa, where she currently resides. She\u2019ll start work with the club in February and says her goal is the same, it\u2019s always been, create a winning culture on and off the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cContinuing to create more opportunities for players, developing more players from FC Northwest, increasing the registration and the club environment there, and just making it a high-level standard that people want to be involved with,\u201d said Scott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Winnipeg soccer legend is returning home for her next chapter. Desiree Scott, a former member of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-409823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}