Absolutely.
We have a great opportunity as well. Canada will be hosting the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, and the 2014 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup. We have a great chance to expose the game to the nation, and not just on the female side. I believe the success or failure of either of our programs, male or female, can inspire both genders. Countless hockey buddies who never kicked a ball in their life came up to me after the bronze medal game and said , “That was unbelievable! What a game!” Everyone was talking about it. We have an opportunity to do that.
The success we've had on the women's side with winning a bronze medal at the Olympics is not because we've got everything right underneath that. It's actually that a great coach has come in and has worked with that group of players and they overachieved. They'll tell you that themselves. What we have underneath that at the grassroots level is broken and needs to be fixed. It needs to come from a huge push to train coaches to teach those children who are 8, 9, or 10 years old how to kick a soccer ball, how to skate, how to swim. The skills that they learn in those sports can stay with them for the rest of their lives. The lessons they learn through sport they will be able to apply to their education, to their jobs, to their families, to their relationships. Everything they do in life, they can apply the lessons that they learned in sport.