Lorraine Chapman - Avid Walking Soccer Player
Lorraine Chapman has rediscovered her love for the sport for the first time since she played running soccer. She shared her experience with us, here’s what she had to say.
On her introduction to playing soccer for the first time…
I started playing women’s running soccer in the summer when I was 47, and I fell in love with running soccer. Before playing soccer, I had never been on a team in my life and I really was not a soccer fan. I had watched my daughter play when she was younger, but quite frankly, I mainly talked with the other moms. I surprised myself, I didn’t even know the rules, but I found it was something I could do. I first joined the Oakville over 35 women’s, and in my second game of the season, I scored a goal, and I was just amazed by myself. I thought I wanted to be part of this and the social part of this. I played indoors during the winter and outdoors in the summer, and then started to play with a smaller group between Burlington and Milton.
On starting her walking soccer journey…
When I was probably 67 or 68 or numbers started to dwindle, a lot of people were getting injured or dropping out, and so a number of us transitioned over to walking soccer with the fellow at Oakville Soccer Club. Some of the women that I was playing with were doubting walking soccer saying “oh, are the guys going to be okay with us, women, playing?”, and everybody’s been terrific, we just have a really good time. Some of the guys have been playing since they were 3 years old because they’re Brits or Scots. The level of skill is not necessarily higher than women, but some of the footwork skills and competitiveness is higher sometimes. Nobody’s 25 years old anymore, and nobody wants to get injured, but the enthusiasm is still there, and it’s a great atmosphere. When we play, we don’t have set teams in Oakville, but we play every Thursday morning and whoever shows up, we split into three or four teams. You’re never on the same team, so you get to know everybody, and we tend to socialize afterwards. It's just a really fun experience.