Norm Nelson
Jul 16, 2014
Three years ago a friend asked Leslieville resident Sylvie De Brabandere to play for the Etobicoke Kangaroos, a club fielding teams in a provincial Australian rules football league.
And now she’s seeking support to go to Australia in August to play for the Canadian national team (called the Northern Lights) in an international tournament.
She’s already three-quarters of the way to achieving her modest crowd-funding request of $4,500 (at www.gofundme.com/send-sylvie-to-ic14 thanks in no small part to the generosity of her own home club.
“The club has been awesome, helping to host barbecues, we had a fundraiser the other week,” she said, in a recent interview.
And that’s already good enough for her to be able to commit to the 2014 International Cup which runs in Melbourne, Australia, Aug. 9 to 23. It’s held every three years.
A native of St. Mary’s, just outside of London, Ont., she has lived in Toronto for the past six years – the last three in Leslieville.
Participating in Australian rules football, let alone at such an elite national-team level, is not something she could ever have foreseen. After all, she’s not from Down Under and had never before dabbled in Aussie rules football.
In high school, she played volleyball, soccer and basketball but primarily focused on training and showing her horse in jumping and eventing.
After high school, volleyball became front and centre which she played at the varsity level (with both Fanshawe College and at the University of Guelph) and at provincial and national levels.
After closing the books on her post secondary career she dabbled in half marathons, trail races, muay thai and crossfit “in the pursuit of a sport that could give me the feeling of camaraderie that I was missing after varsity.”
Her quest was finally completed through her co-worker, originally from Australia, who played for Etobicoke and who invited her out to a practice.
“So that was my first time playing ‘footy’ and only because he dragged me out there,” she said. “I was terrified. I had never played a contact sport in my life.”
She not only proved to be a quick convert to the rugged sport, but also a quick study, quickly making the national team.
The Australian version of rugby is well represented in Ontario with 10 clubs – seven of them, including the Kangaroos, based out of Toronto and the other three from Hamilton, Ottawa and Guelph.
Currently, six of the Toronto clubs are playing their home games out of Humber College South, including the Kangaroos, with one team playing out of the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus.
The league offers two levels of competition for men and one women’s league.
The Northern Lights are being joined in Australia by a Canadian development team called the Midnight Suns and they’ll face teams from the U.S. (two teams), defending champion Ireland, Fiji and Tonga.
Fellow Toronto clubs have also supplied three other members to the Northern Lights, who earned the silver medal at the 2011 tournament – Heather Walshe and Sarah Ennor from High Park Demons and Jen Nicholls from Toronto Central Blues.
The Canadian men’s team – the Northwind – which finished 10th in 2011 is also competing. Their first-round opponents are China, the United States and Sweden.
Last Modified on 19/07/2014 05:04