Gators rising senior Deanne Rose must wait until 2021 to play in her second Summer Olympics with the Canadian National Team. (Photo: Tim Cowie/UAA Communications)
Rose Experienced Impact of Coronavirus on Sports Prior to Games Stopping in U.S.
Tuesday, March 31, 2020 | Soccer, Scott Carter
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Earlier this month, Deanne Rose and the rest of Canada Senior National Team played in a stadium empty of fans in the final day of Tournoi de France play.
By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Deanne Rose spent her 21st birthday earlier this month in northern France, preparing for a four-team international women's soccer event called the Tournoi de France. As a member of the Canadian National Team, it was the latest in a string of games to prepare for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
A rising senior for the Gators, Rose is a world traveler because of soccer, so being away from family and friends on a milestone birthday is not that big of a deal. To her the celebration March 3 was pleasant.
"I was with my teammates,'' Rose said Tuesday. "It was pretty good."
In the wake of what unfolded over the next several days, it's a birthday Rose is unlikely to forget.
The next evening, Canada faced host France in Calais, a coastal city located about 35 miles from Dunkirk, the site of a famous World War II battle and name of the Academy Award-nominated 2017 war film. In Canada's first game of the tournament, more than 7,000 fans watched at Stade de L 'Epopee as the French took a 1-0 victory. Less than 1,000 fans attended Canada's tie with Netherlands three days later, and on March 10, the final day of the tournament, the Canada-Brazil game in Calais and the France-Netherlands match in nearby Valenciennes were played in empty stadiums due to increased concerns over the coronavirus.
Summer of 2019 was spent in France for World Cup ⚽️ play.
Summer of 2020 was to include a trip to Japan to help Team 🇨🇦 to another Olympic medal.
With talk swirling that American sports could reopen to similar restrictions whenever our games return, Rose won't need to be briefed on what that might look like should it happen. She said her only comparable experience prior to the precautions in France was playing a closed exhibition match for Team Canada.
"That was definitely a first for me,'' she said. "It was weird, and it was difficult for our teammates who had their families travel to France. It was definitely a change from the first game. At the beginning of the week, we only heard about corona[virus] a little bit. Through the tournament, it moved to, 'OK, now we're not going to do handshakes, just elbow touches,' to try and reduce the risk of spreading the virus. And then by the end, they just said that there will be no fans."
On March 11, Rose and her teammates departed France and by the end of the week she was back in the states when major travel restrictions and public-gathering cancelations due to the coronavirus began to dominate the news cycle across the globe. Her next event with Team Canada was supposed to be a friendly against Australia on April 14 in Vancouver.
"I was really lucky to get back when I did," she said.
Deanne Rose, right, plays for the Canadian National Team when not on the field for the Gators. (Photo: Courtesy of Team Canada)
With the Tokyo Olympics now postponed until July 2021 and normal activities restricted for the time being, Rose is in Gainesville taking advantage of the Florida weather and the ability to train outside on her own.
"Obviously it's very limited what we can and can't do in terms of going to the gym to stay strong and going to the fields,'' she said. "I'm still finding a way to get access to balls and doing things myself. Training really hard for something that's in a couple of months is different than training for something that is in a year. It's just kind of a mindset and physical shift there."
Rose joined the Gators in 2017 and scored nine goals as a true freshman. She played sparingly with the Gators in 2018 due to Team Canada commitments and last season as a junior, Rose scored six goals and added a pair of assists in 13 games. With the postponement of the Olympics for a year and Rose set to return for her senior season in the fall, what impact that will have on her ability to contribute to the Gators remains uncertain.
The past few weeks have been hectic for Rose, a native of Alliston, Ontario, who helped Canada earn a bronze medal in the 2016 Olympics.
"It's been up and down because at first I heard that Canada wasn't participating whether the Olympics were going on or not,'' she said. "I was worried that the Olympics were going to go on and Canada wasn't going to get a chance to participate. When the IOC did postpone the Games, it was a little bit of a relief.
"I think that they made the right decision."
Rose has spent the past few days processing the news and adjusting her outlook. Her emotions have ranged from disappointment and anger to acceptance. She said the hardest part is knowing all the preparation and sacrifices she has made over the past year will not pay off this summer.
"Olympic preparation is something that is hard to sustain, so just thinking about doing it all over again was pretty tough,'' she said. "In the end, and that's where I am now, I realize how serious the COVID-19 is and how serious some people's situations are."
Rose is a veteran of international competition, becoming the youngest women's player in Olympics history to score a goal when she found the net in Canada's 2-1 win over Brazil in the 2016 Summer Games' bronze medal match. In February, Rose was in southern California and delivered the game-winning cross to teammate Jordyn Huitema in the 1-0 win over Costa Rica to qualify Canada for 2020 Olympic play.
To stay busy with campus shut down, Rose tries to get outside at least once, maybe twice a day to run and stay conditioned. As one of the Gators' seniors, she wants to offer support to younger teammates as the Gators figure out ways to stay connected remotely during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mostly, she is focused on making the most of a difficult situation. She has plenty of practice recently considering her trip to France.
"Soccer is a team sport,'' she said. "Training by yourself and running by yourself, that's not what we do. That's not what we love to do. We love to play soccer. It's definitely hard and it definitely takes a lot of self-motivation, but I think that there's positives to look for of it. If we can come out of this and people can be self-motivated and still work out on their own, then when we get together it's just going to be greater."
