By Frederick Halley
THE name Charmaine Elizabeth Hooper is synonymous with ‘Canadian soccer’ [known as football in Guyana], and she will be remembered as one of the country’s best-ever women players.

Hooper enjoyed an illustrious career spanning just over two decades and left an indelible mark on Canadian soccer with her scintillating performances. Today, the now-54-year-old Hooper lives in Waco, Texas, USA. These days, her attention is centred principally on her 17-year-old daughter Charlie, who’s following closely in her footsteps but whom she feels is even a better player than she was at the same age. “I would like to tell her that if I had the opportunity that she has, I would be in heaven. When I was growing up in Canada, at 14. I was playing in the Under-18 age group.”

Charlie is eligible to represent USA, Canada and Guyana and was invited earlier this year for a tryout in Canada, but opted out for personal reasons. Despite not being Charlie’s coach, both Charmaine and her father Chuck, formerly a coach at Baylor University, play valuable roles in her progression and are present at all of her practice sessions and games. This entails hours of travelling between Waco and Dallas, where Charlie plays club soccer.
That apart, Charmaine manages four Vacation Rentals and also owns a Child Care Centre.

As she reflected on her own career in Canada, Hooper shared that she feels somewhat slighted with the treatment meted out to her after her glittering career ended in 2006. She admitted that currently, the Canadian Football Federation is making efforts to have the “right” persons on board but felt this wasn’t the case previously.

According to the outspoken Hooper, who is a close relative of former Guyana and West Indies player Carl Hooper, she didn’t even expect to be invited to be part of the federation since “I spent a lot of time battling with the authorities for the improvement of the women’s game.”

Hooper referred to other countries who are using their past players, especially in their youth programmes, to assist in their development of the game, but this wasn’t the case in Canada, where she claimed there were persons in the federation who knew nothing about soccer but were all “yes people; people they can control and agree with everything they say.”

On a more positive note, Hooper said, “things seemed to have changed somewhat since I noticed they have been hiring a few ex-players in the federation, and that’s a good start.”

Touching on women’s soccer in Guyana, Charmaine feels there’s a need for a more structured programme with the game being played more at the club and school levels. She also thinks that the Guyana Football Federation needs to invest more, financially, in the women’s game since it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Charmaine is also urging the young players in Guyana not to be distracted by the number of overseas-based players in the national team, but to use that as a motivation to show off their undoubted skills.

Hooper was inducted into the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame in June 2012 and in October of that year, into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in Calgary. And as if that weren’t enough, she was inducted into the North Carolina State Athletic Hall of Fame in 2014.

Significantly, Hooper was inducted into the United Soccer League’s Hall of Fame in 2002 after being named Atlanta Beat’s Most Valuable Player (MVP), and became the only Canadian player in Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) history to score in the Founders Cup III.

Strong, powerful and determined, the powerhouse played 131 times for the Canadian team, scoring no fewer than 71 goals.

Hooper made her debut for Team Canada as an 18-year-old against Team USA in July, 1986. She went on to represent Canada at three FIFA Women’s World Cups (Sweden 1995, USA 1999, USA 2003). At the 1995 and 1999 World Cups, Hooper was recognized by the FIFA Women’s World Cup Technical Study Group as one of Canada’s outstanding players.

She won two silver medals for Canada at the CONCACAF Women’s Championships (1991, 1994). She also helped lead Canada to its first-ever CONCACAF gold in 1998. She was named Canadian Player of the Year in 1994, 1995, 2002 and 2003 and was the first player to have 100 caps for the women’s national team.

After high school, Hooper attended North Carolina State University (NC State) in Raleigh, North Carolina, from 1987 to 1990. She graduated with a degree in food sciences.

During her career with the NC State Wolfpack women’s soccer team, Hooper set various individual records that still stand, including most points in a single season (57); most goals in a single season (26); most points in a career (145); most goals in a career (58); most points in a single season by a freshman (46); most consecutive games with a goal (seven); and most consecutive games with at least one point (11). She is also tied for the school record for most goals in a game (four).

In her first year with the team, Hooper helped the Wolfpack qualify for the NCAA quarterfinals. In her sophomore year, she led the team to an Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) championship and then to the NCAA Finals — NC State’s best finish ever. They made it to the NCAA semifinals and then the NCAA quarterfinals in the next two years.

Hooper also played for FK Donn of the Norwegian Toppserien, where she scored 17 goals in 13 league appearances. After a short period with Lazio of Serie A, she signed a professional contract with Japanese League club Prima Ham FC and was a highly valued player in Japan before returning to North America after four seasons.

The well-travelled former striker comes from a sports-oriented family. She is the sister of Lyndon Hooper, also a former Canadian footballer. .

After leaving Guyana at the tender age of eight, Hooper lived with her parents in Zambia, where her father served as a diplomat and she attended an American school where soccer was predominantly played by boys, including her brother Lyndon. It wasn’t until she came to Ontario, Canada, that she saw an entire team of girls playing.

Hooper served as an Honorary Ambassador for the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup Canada 2002, was a member on the Organising Committee for the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup Chile 2008, and also served on the Technical Study Group at the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup Germany 2010.

Hooper was one of the original six members of the Canadian women’s national team that formed in 1986. She was also the first player on the team to have 100 caps (appearances in international competition). During her 20-year career, she laced up for Canada 129 times and scored 71 goals, making her Canada’s all-time leading goal scorer (a record since surpassed by Christine Sinclair).