Jordyn Huitema was just 17 years old when, having grown up among Chilliwack’s modest population of 93,000, she landed in the big city of Paris. She was the third-youngest player in the history of Canada’s national team, its second-youngest goal-scorer and was already being dubbed the successor to Christine Sinclair, her country’s greatest-ever soccer player. When she chose to skip college to sign a professional deal with Paris Saint-Germain then, the expectation became even greater.
But when GOAL asks her now, aged 22, how she dealt with all of that at such a young age, in a new country with a different culture and language, her response is a wonderful example of how good Huitema is at ignoring the outside noise. She didn't struggle with the pressure or media attention. Instead, her difficulties were the logistical problems of chasing a huge soccer dream, thousands of miles from home, while still being so young.
“You can't have an apartment until you're 18 in Europe, if you're international,” Huitema explains. “So, for six months, I lived in a hotel. I had all of my suitcases packed in a hotel room, of my whole life. I had like six or seven suitcases just jammed in a tiny European hotel room. Every time I had national-team camp, I had to check out of the room and then store all of my bags in a storage unit, and then come back from national team, grab all the bags, bring them back, check in again. I had to do that every month for the national team and I did that for like six or seven months, just because I wanted really good training ahead of the 2019 World Cup.”
It paid dividends, because Huitema was named to that World Cup roster, heading to the tournament for the first time aged 18. She’d already made history that year as the first Canadian to turn pro out of high school in a career that appeared to be all about breaking new ground. The news of her addition to New Balance’s roster of athletes, announced on Thursday, feels fitting, then.
This is a brand that supports so many sports stars that have broken through at a tender age, be it tennis sensation Coco Gauff, United States men’s national team forward Timothy Weah or, across the pond, England’s Bukayo Saka. Now, as it looks to make waves in the women’s soccer space, it is linking up with an athlete, in Huitema, who knows that the path to the top is both arduous and rewarding.