Young footballer Courtney Rose Bahadursingh had not visited Trinidad and Tobago, the birthplace of her mother Ria, and grandparents John and Rose, until she got the opportunity to play for the national football team at the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup.
Bahadursingh now wants to return to T&T more often.
“It was honestly a great experience. At first I didn’t think I was going to be able to handle it, being away from home for so long, but it really helped me to grow as a person after this experience.
This has also really given me the opportunity to meet more family members and now that I have come back I want to come back more often.”
Bahadursingh said she was inspired to get involved in football by her mother.
“My mom played soccer so when her team was at practice I would just practice along with her and also some of my friends were playing soccer, but it really was because of my mom. She was my biggest inspiration.”
At age seven, Bahadursingh started playing competitive soccer in Canada for Scarborough United, a team of girls of Caribbean and Canadian parentage.
“We are a very diverse team,” said the T&T defender, who continued to play with that team until she was 15.
Then one of her friends, Nykosi Simmons, who was already on the T&T team told her about playing for this country.
“I got in contact with the goalie coach Marius who works in Ontario, Canada, by email and then I came down in March to try out, after which he called me back to come and tour Korea with them. From there he asked me to be on the team.”
After schools closed in June, the entire team returned to T&T and stayed together as a team until the end of their stint in the tournament.
Bahadursingh admitted that getting knocked out of the tournament in the first round was hard for the entire team.
She said: “At first everyone was crying. then the technical staff members told us it’s not over, we all can still hold our heads up high even though we didn’t make it into the second round.
They said we changed history because we were the first T&T team to win a World Cup game.”
At dinner the night after their final game, Bahadursingh said team members gave farewell speeches and spent time together in the hall of the third floor of the Crowne Plaza.
They had the entire floor to themselves, so they spent several hours playing music and signing each others’ t- shirts.
“We all agreed that we have to keep in contact,” said Bahadursingh.
The teen footballer, who plans to study psychology is not sure about her future with the team.
She admitted: “I don’t know what I’m going to do when I go back home because it was always football.
I will continue to play football because my mom still plays football. She has been playing her whole life and that is something that I will also want to do.
I definitely would be interested in playing for T&T at any level in the future once I’m called.”
Her immediate plan is to go back to school, get good marks and possibly win a scholarship to university.