After Jamaica became the first ever Caribbean side to qualify for the Women’s World Cup on Wednesday night, a reporter asked technical director Hue Menzies a rather unusual question.
Remembering Cool Runnings, a movie about the Jamaican bobsled team that competed at the 1988 Winter Olympics, she asked Menzies what actor he wanted to portray him in a movie about his history-making soccer team.
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“You know, I like Denzel Washington,” Menzies replied with a laugh. “I like Denzel Washington. It’s been a movie for us. … If you want to make a movie of it, it’s a great movie.”
Cooling Runnings was a 1993 comedy that was loosely based on a true story. But what the Reggae Girlz have endured over the past decade, including the recently completed CONCACAF Women’s Championship, has been strictly non-fiction.
They have overcome poor to non-existent funding that resulted in the suspension of the women’s program in 2010. They played no matches from 2009 to 2013 and 2016 to June of this year.
“This is way more than football,” Menzies said about the historic achievement. “This is just a statement. We’re going to change the culture back home on how they perceive women. It’s change, a big sacrifice. You know what? Those 20 girls decided to make a change. It’s amazing, man.”
What the Jamaicans accomplished at the CONCACAF Women’s Championship was pretty amazing in itself. Considered outsiders to reach the semifinals, they finished as Group B runners-up behind Canada with a 2-1-0 record. They lost their opener to the Canadians by a respectable 2-0 score before rebounding with a stunning 1-0 triumph over highly favored Costa Rica (Las Ticas, who participated at the 2015 Women’s World Cup, boasted the likes of Shirley Cruz and Raquel Rodriguez), and completed their remarkable group-stage run with a 9-0 rout of Cuba.
Jamaica came back down to earth with a 6-0 defeat to the eventual champion United States in the semis. Then, in the third-place match, which proved to be the most dramatic of the tournament’s 16 games, Jamaica battled a plucky Panama side at rain-soaked Toyota Stadium.
Menzies, with the help of Lorne Donaldson, who once coached the A-League’s Colorado Foxes, decided to hold their final substitution until the end of extra time. That’s when they replaced regular goalkeeper Sydney Schneider, who had enjoyed a pretty decent competition up until that point, with Nicole McClure. McClure, who is the daughter of two Jamaican natives, was born, ironically, in Jamaica, N.Y.
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“We planned it from day one that we were going to make that sub,” Menzies said. “We kept the sub. We knew that if it comes to this point, Nicole is going to step up quick, a lot quicker than Schneider. She has a good instinct. You can see it in her eyes when she’s on the bench. She knew it’s her time, Nicole’s time.”
The strategy worked to perfection.
The Caribbean side connected on all four of its penalty kicks, while McClure played hero by knocking away the final attempts as Jamaica won the tiebreaker 4-2, after playing to a 2-2 draw over 120 minutes.
“I’m telling you, a very emotional time,” Menzies said. “Happy for the girls. Happy for our staff, happy for the people that supported us from day one and also happy for the naysayers. The thank yous can’t stop. The sacrifices, we’ll still keep plugging. The adversities will always be there.”
The key is overcoming them. The Jamaicans’ most recent turning point came in the 1-0 triumph over Costa Rica.
“We knew that if we didn’t win that game, we were out, we were done,” Menzies said. “We challenged the players and they responded. It’s a tough group. These kids, if you start reading some of their stories, you don’t have to teach a whole lot of competitiveness. They’re born fighting at the dinner table for food. You’re dealing with kids who just know how to motivate themselves and deal with adversity.”
Losing a soccer game? That’s nothing compared to what 21-year-old star midfielder Khadija Shaw has endured. She lost four brothers—three to violence and another to a car crash—and a 23-year-old nephew, who was electrocuted by stepping on a live wire while searching for a soccer ball that had been kicked in the bushes during a scrimmage last year.
Still, Shaw, who scored three goals—one in each of Jamaica’s three wins—amazingly has kept her spirit, both on and off the pitch. She has good pace for a player her size (5-foot-11) and isn’t afraid to get a little physical, sometimes a little too much. Just ask U.S. midfielder Julie Ertz, the tournament’s golden ball winner, who was punched by Shaw in the 42nd minute of the semifinal.
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During a pre-tournament interview, Shaw gave a little insight into her drive.
“When the situations would get tough—as most people know I have lost a lot of people in my life, it was tough,” she said. “Just as when you are on a soccer field and you’re one goal down, you’ve got to push. You need that goal. I just have go fast and know that, well, they’re in a better place and they want me to do what I want to do, which is play soccer.”
Only 24 hours after making history, Shaw returned to the University of Tennessee and was a part of more 11th-hour dramatics Thursday night, coming off the bench to head home a Katie Cousins corner kick in the 108th minute to propel the 18th-ranked Vols (11-2-2) to a 2-1 home victory over LSU. Despite missing seven matches due to national team obligations, Shaw, nicknamed “Bunny” because she likes carrots, still leads her squad with eight goals in seven appearances.
Starting to see why this needs a film adaptation?
Jody Brown, a 16-year-old striker who was named young player of the tournament, led the Girlz with four goals, including a hat trick against Cuba. In the third-place match she set up Shaw’s goal and scored in extra time.
She is one of a few Jamaica players who hasn’t played college soccer in the U.S., although she is attending Montverde Academy, a private college preparatory school in Florida, after she was scouted in an Orlando tournament in 2017.
A good portion of the team was born to expat Jamaican parents, and those players have played college ball in the United States. That includes defender Christina Chang, who, at 33, is the team’s oldest player. Her day job? An air traffic controller at Miami International Airport.
Speaking of day jobs, Menzies is executive director of Florida Kraze Krush Soccer, which competes in the ECNL, and the head coach of the Florida Crush, which plays in the Women’s Premier Soccer League. His plates seemingly are always full. On Wednesday, on the day of the most important game of Jamaican women’s soccer history, Menzies was dealing with issues concerning his youth club.
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“I’m in an issue with a U-9 parent on the phone this morning,” he said. “Thank God for technology. We’ve made so much sacrifices and we owe it to a lot of people.”
Just another day and another problem to solve.
There have been bigger ones, such as little or no financial support from the Jamaican Football Federation. Musician and entrepreneur Cedella Marley, daughter of the late, great Reggae icon Bob Marley, has helped the national side through the Bob Marley Foundation the past four years after funding was cut.
“I’m a firm believer that every girl should have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, whether it’s football, music, business, whatever it is,” Marley told FIFA.com.
“A lot of big up to Cedella Marley for putting her neck on the line for us,” Menzies said during Wednesday’s press conference.
Regardless how they fare in France—by the way, Jamaica’s lone men’s World Cup appearance happened to be in that country in 1998—these women already have won and won big, against some steep odds.
There will be other battles to be won before the Women’s World Cup, but first, a celebration of the team’s achievements.
“We’re going to go back home and celebrate,” Menzies said. “There’s not a whole lot of space on that island, but we’re going to find every inch and everything to celebrate on because it’s history, history in the making.”
Then, Menzies and his staff will get serious and make some demands of the powers that be as they begin to prepare for the June 7, 2019 kickoff in France (the Jamaicans will discover their group-stage foes at the Dec. 8 draw).
“Once we made the World Cup, now we should have all the say,” he said. “My staff is a very tough group, a very demanding group. We’re going to request it. Again, this is history in the making and it’s going to change the mindset of our country. And we go down there and we issue a calendar to prepare ourselves for the World Cup. We expect them to approve it.”
Hmmm. Just imagine Denzel Washington saying that on the big screen.
(Photo: Omar Vega/Getty Images)