Inside preparations for Atlantic Canada’s first professional women’s soccer club

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Syd Kennedy got into her car, and as she had innumerable times before, left her familial home in Fletchers Lake, N.S., to play soccer.

She had made that same drive through Fall River to the BMO Soccer Centre every morning for training during high school. And her commute was the same, her route skirting the heart-shape of Halifax, navigating the traffic on Highway 102 amidst November’s gull grey skies. But this drive was unlike any she had done before: Kennedy was headed to the prospects camp for the province’s first professional women’s soccer club, the Halifax Tides. And she was nervous.

“There were a lot of feelings on that car ride in,” said Kennedy.

“To be (trialing) for the first women’s professional team, the first feeling was just gratitude to be part of it. And sitting there in the car, thinking of all the memories I had growing up with Soccer Nova Scotia and knowing there’s an opportunity to be a trailblazer for the next generation, that they get to see women in their hometown play professionally… It was pretty overwhelming.”

“I will say it was a pretty amazing feeling to put the hoodie on and see ‘Halifax Tides’ and know that I was representing the best city in the world”

—Syd Kennedy

Regardless of her nerves, Kennedy impressed and was one of the first players announced by the Tides. Her signing spread like wildfire through Atlantic Canada’s soccer community. “I will say it was a pretty amazing feeling to put the hoodie on and see ‘Halifax Tides’ and know that I was representing the best city in the world,” she said. “I mean that with my whole heart.”

As a Nova Scotian, the opportunity to play professional soccer in her home province was not lost on Kennedy—it was not an option during her youth, or really for any woman in Canada looking to play at home. That player pathway simply didn’t exist.

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