In her first year on the Fanshawe Falcons, Erin Hemming has managed to make a name for herself as a center defender, snagging three awards at this year’s banquet, including the OCAA Championship Tournament Most Valuable Player nod. 



However, life on the field has not been as easy as she makes it look. Prior to her Fanshawe debut, Hemming attended the University of Eastern Michigan, but before she could showcase her talents was sidelined with a stress fracture in her back and was not capable of playing for over a year as she recovered. Despite this hurdle, Erin has evolved into one of Fanshawe’s leading defenders and owes much of her success to playing soccer with her older brother since she was four.

Although she may look like all work and no play, Erin is also a leader amongst her teammates and attributes her one-liners and sarcasm as a way of getting her fellow players to respond. The Falcon women are a tight-knit crew and will use their strong camaraderie while they search for a national championship gold medal.

Follow Erin and her Fanshawe Falcon’s team as they represent Ontario at the 2009 Big Kahuna/adidas CCAA Women’s National Soccer Championship in Toronto.

Day 1

Procrastinated in packing, so was woken up by my best friend Mr. Alarm Clock bright and early. I hate mornings. I rolled everything up in a ball and shoved them in a bag. When everyone arrived at the school this morning we all stocked up on candy and greasy food cause that’s our teams style.

I fell into a small coma on the bus and woke up when we pulled up to the hotel. We all rushed to our room and changed into our practice gear. We were greeted at the Soccer Center with presents which started to make the national excitement feel a bit more real for the team and I.

We headed out to the field with our new swag and other various goodies and started to practice. Martin Painter, my coach, make’s every practice so much fun but we still get a lot of business done. Our whole team is very close and I give lots of the credit to Martin and his practices. He balances friend and authority perfectly and I attribute lots of our success to his coaching this year.

After practice we all got dressed up and went to the banquet. It was very professional it had a nice theme and everyone was very polite. Everything was executed well and the whole night seemed to run smoothly. There were lots of prizes and involvement for everyone. Humber has been a great host and the next host will have a tough act to follow.

Every game will be tough, we don’t know what to expect from anyone. I can’t wait for tomorrow to play another 90 minutes of my favourite pass time with my favourite group of girls.

DAY 2

8 AM breakfast today, out of bed at 7:50. We all had Wheaties cereal boxes with our pictures on them sitting on our team tables. I came back to the room and slept for a bit longer then got ready for my game.

No one seemed to be nervous for our game; everyone seemed relaxed and confident. The weather conditions were a lot better compared to the demon weather clouds that followed us through provincials.

We started our game off strong with two quick goals encouragement spreading from the sidelines all across the field kept the momentum. We feed off each other, being such a close team, so everyone being on the same page helped with our positive result. Props to Halifax for coming out strong in the second half. They showed a lot of heart and determination. We had two veteran Falcons come support us and we appreciate the peanut gallery comments throughout the game. Thank you Shasta MacDermid and Ashley Strocki.

After the game we received more gifts. We had blankets individually laid out in our change room. They are no snuggie but they are a close second. We talked business in the change room for a bit but that’s a secret what we said.

Back at the hotel we had some down time to do some homework, nap, shower or whatever we wanted to do. I panicked and did nothing for the few hours we had off, probably still on my adrenaline rush from the game/extremely excited to visit my friend the Eaton Center.

It was nice to see some small town girls get excited to see downtown Toronto. Some have never been. We split off into groups maintaining the buddy system and went where we wanted to. We met up later for dinner and walked to Fionn MacCool’s. It was a fun atmosphere and they even had balloons ready for us when we arrived.

Our bus picked us up from our restaurant and as we were driving by the CN Tower we had to stop for our special little Jory Lynn Uyl to run out and take a closer look. She needs to get out more.

Tomorrow the plans are to sleep with the alarm unplugged so I can wake up on my own and then practice in the afternoon. It’s a day for all our knocks and bruises to heal and mentally prepare ourselves for the Quebecer’s on Friday.

Day 3

Today we all woke up on our own schedule. Some of the girls picked up some groceries for lunch and we all met downstairs at noon. After lunch we went to the Halifax/Quebec game to assess our next opponents. Nationals is difficult because we are playing teams we know very little about so seeing Quebec play was very beneficial for us. After the game we practiced our tactics for how we were going to play tomorrow and were all starting to get very excited. The practice was fun and we just took the time to get loose and practice our transitions. At the end of practice we took penalty shots.

I never hope any game comes down to that but it is good that we prepared ourselves just in case. I feel tomorrow will be a great game to watch. Quebec
is a very tactical team and will be well matched with our Falcons. We'll have
to beat them in work ethic to get to the gold medal game.

After practice we had some down time in our hotel rooms to hang out with each other. We all looked at pictures from our first game and got ready for dinner. We went to Jack Astors. It was a pretty uneventful day but tomorrow will be much more exciting.

Tonight I plan on getting a good night sleep because tomorrow's game will determine whether we're in the gold medal game or the bronze medal game. Tomorrow I know I'll be leaving my heart on the field and I know all the Fanshawe girls will do the same.

Day 4

So we won. Usually I would maybe work my way through the day and tell what we did before but all that's in my head right now is that we won.

It was a very hard battle. 120 minutes of one of the dirtiest games I have experienced in a while. I am covered in bruises and turf burns. Samesies for the girls on my team. Quebec put up a good fight but our plan was to outwork them so they wouldn't be first to the ball. Once they have the ball they are very dangerous. Tanya Beishuizen (sounds like bye- shy- zen) won player of the game, which is very well deserved. She was put in the game to mark man to man their center forward and they were never a big threat.

Emily Gillet, our goalie, killed it. First of all, I play center defense and to have a goalie you trust is very important. I trust Gillet. Having her save the first two goals for our penalty shoot out was huge. It gave confidence to our shooters and pumped us for our gold medal match tomorrow. Congrats to the girls who stepped up and took a penalty shot because I know how nerve racking that can be.

After the game, our team went to Much Music to participate in Much on Demand. I was still hurting from the game so I rested in my room but I'll have a guest speaker talk about the experience. Handing my computer over to Nicola Henderson.

So the team and I moseyed on down to the big city on our big bus. Having the ginormous bus on the little streets is very nerve racking, but Jimmy the bus driver owns the road=2C and weaves through the one way streets with ease as we watch inappropriate movies (Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay).

Once we arrived on the busy streets on Toronto we were kindly greeted by some of the Much Music crew to get interviewed outside. It was nice. The street meat cart also smelled delicious. Too bad we already had dinner reservations. We got into the building and after the long wait, finally got onto the set of MOD. Kwame and Alvin, the producers, were super nice and very well organized. It was really cool to meet the VJ=92s nd also to get a chance to talk to them.

Just like when we were at the mall, little Jory Lynn Uyl was starstruck and contrary to what Kwame had told us, Jory waved "Hi" to her mom in the camera. In between the video requests and news updates, we were all dancing and singing to the songs. Unbeknownst to us, we were being taped, and our slick dance moves were being broadcasted on national television. In addition to that, I was silly enough to dance off the set in between songs and Kwame thought that I should keep dancing. So that's what I did.

Despite the embarrassment, and the fact that millions of people saw me bust a move, it was a lot of fun. Our team is an unreal amount of fun to be around and the pounding headache from all the screaming was definitely worth it. Backover to Erin.

Dinner was great, we went to Tony Roma's and met a great lady named Mary, she was a character. She helped our server because it turned out he was sub par. We even wrote her a thank you note on a napkin. Tonight we're just going to rest for our game and watch TV. We are harassed at every commercial to call Quest. A few of the girls are considering it as a joke. All the local singles are trying it apparently.

I can't wait for tomorrow. This is for all the glory. This means so much to all of us and I think it shows in every game. Come out and watch us play for every inch. Until then, keep fit and have fun.

Day 5>

We have decided to write this final blog as a team.

Well second place stings a lot. We all played our hearts out. We were exhausted but never gave up. Alberta was a very talented team and very classy. We had many fans come out and we really appreciated their support. Being an Ontario team we were the under dog and many of the teams believed that we were not adequate enough to be in the final game let alone in the national tournament.

Although we lost and were very upset after the match we came together as a team to realize that second best in all of Canada isn't that bad. On our trip home we were a bit timid at first but after our trip to McDonalds we quickly came around and our spirits were lifted.

We all feel that we have represented Fanshawe College very well, especially since they have not gotten this far in a very, very long time. We have come such a long way and even though we got second we are SOO proud of the accomplishments that we have gained over the course of the year. Hopefully, soccer will be noticed at Fanshawe from here on out.

We are looking forward to next year and hope that we get a chance to come as far as we did this year because coming to a national championship is phenominal.

GREAT SEASON LADIES WE ARE SOOO PROUD OF EVERYONE!!!!!

- Erin