You gotta love an underdog match. We’re enamored by them. Drawn in by the sheer possibility that the person or team who wasn’t expected to go anywhere actually can. It reminds us we can, too.
Today, Team Canada’s female rugby team is our reminder. While their toughest opponents are professionals who are paid to play, many of the Canadians are still amateurs who earn a living as firefighters, an engineer, and a school coach. When Canadian government funding fell short, this team found a way forward by crowdfunding the money needed for training camps and practice rounds in South Africa and Ireland so they’d be fully prepared for the World Cup. Today, they play in the finals.
The Canadians credit hard work and water. Not drinking it. Being like it. Their coach introduced the notion with a book titled “Just Be Water, My Friend” by Shannon Lee, the daughter of the famed martial arts king and actor, Bruce Lee.
Bruce considered water an inspirational metaphor. It finds a way around obstacles, being in flow, powerful, unstoppable. It is not perfect, and it moves in imperfect circumstances - like the Canadian team has had to without designated facilities, adequate funding, injuries, and more. But these women have taken the water metaphor and flowed with it, finding a way in the imperfection.
After winning a silver medal at last year’s Paris Olympics, the Canadians have shown up big at the current World Cup. In the recent semi-finals, they beat New Zealand, the defending World Cup champions for six of the last seven years.
Yet still, the Maple Leafs are being called underdogs going into today’s final in Twickenham, where a record 82,000 fans will watch them take on top-ranked England, a team the Canadians have not beaten in the last 32 matches. But that does not deter them. Star player, Sophie de Goede, says, “We’ve defied the odds over and over again. That has a way of bringing you together and a way of propelling you forward and fostering that knowledge in the group that we can overcome anything.”
Just like water. Just like you. And just like me. Let it flow.
Go Maple Leafs!