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This article was published 19/5/2015 (1951 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If one image could tell the story of where women's soccer is going, it might look like this: A legion of 200 girls, sprinting over turf in hot-pink shirts.

In this picture, captured at the Subway Soccer South Indoor Complex on Monday afternoon, the young athletes are radiant. They'd marched together into the complex, parading single-file while triumphant music blared over the speakers, the beaming parents waved from the viewing gallery upstairs.

The girls were gathered there for FIFA's Live Your Goals festival, a series of soccer clinics sweeping across Canada in advance of the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. The events kicked off last year, and wrap up in Vancouver next week -- just in time for the tournament itself to begin gearing up.

'This is a celebration of soccer: the game of soccer, played by girls' ‐ Sylvie Béliveau

In the aspirational language of FIFA campaigns, the Live Your Goals festival is a "legacy event," one of a pile of community-focused programs linked to the World Cup. In practical terms, it was a chance for those 200 girls to soak up a skills clinic taught by some of Manitoba's top female players.

It wasn't just Manitobans, either. Also on the field was Dayna Castellanos, the Venezuelan striker who led all goal-scoring at the 2014 Under 17 FIFA Women's World Cup, and former Canadian national team members Brittany Baxter and Melanie Booth, both part of the 2012 Olympic bronze medallist team.

"This is a celebration of soccer: the game of soccer, played by girls," Canada Soccer long-term development manager Sylvie Béliveau said, and so it was.

This part of the lead-up matters. The girls that flew over the turf Monday afternoon learning to dribble and score, they are the future of this sport.

"As much as we're involved in the excellence side, we're also concerned with the sport development side," said Annette Wildgoose, legacy and special projects director for the FIFA 2015 Women's World Cup. "Our numbers in the Canadian Soccer Association are well represented by young girls playing, but what we need to do is ensure we provide ongoing support and motivation for these young girls to stay within the game."

The goal, in short, is always to move forward. Because there's another image that matters here, too, one about where women's soccer has been.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Former Canadian national team member Brittany Baxter was on hand to sign autographs and talk with the girls.

Flash back to an image Vanessa Martinez Lagunas holds in her head, one about growing up in the Mexican city of Toluca, in the shadow of the splendid volcano which sleeps southwest of the city's edge. That's where the University of Manitoba Bisons women's soccer coach grew up, watching her brother play soccer with his friends.

There were no girls' teams for her to play on back then. Instead, the 10-year-old started tentatively joining in with the boys.

"I was really bad at the beginning," Lagunas remembered, laughing. "Some of them were making fun of me. So I said, 'I'm going to show them. I'm going to learn, and I'm going to be better than them.' I worked so hard, and then I was dribbling (past) them, I was one of the best players. That was a great satisfaction for me."

Over and over, Lagunas showed those old childhood friends what a female soccer player can do: She played for Mexico's national team, earned a PhD in sports science, became a coach. On Monday, she stood in the centre of the Live Your Goals whirlwind, helping to guide the young players through their rotations.

After all these years she can still pause to marvel that the 200 girls kicking balls around at Live Your Goals are growing up in a world where it's normal.

"It's really emotional," Lagunas agreed. "I love that now our young generation has this type of opportunity. Just look. They have former national team players here. They have the top goal scorer of the U17 FIFA Women's World Cup. They have that inspiration, and know that there is so much future in this sport."

For Manitoba's soccer community, the next step will be to keep that going. While the FIFA Women's World Cup will put an unprecedented local spotlight on soccer next month, there is still more work to be done to encourage young athletes to stick with the sport.

On that note, the Live Your Goals clinic actually served as a preview of sorts of the type of programming the Manitoba Soccer Association is looking to emphasize. It'll be a "whole new regional technical infrastructure," MSA president Peter Muir said, that they plan to roll out over the next few months.

"It's all about concentrating players in a field at a common age, so they all get the same skills," Muir said. "That's exactly what this (Live Your Goals) is. Concentrated drills, moving players, maximizing the field, this is the future of the game. This is how it's developed."

Currently, women and girls are well represented in Manitoba's soccer ranks, comprising about half of the 32,000 players in youth and adult leagues across the province. Interestingly, Muir said the MSA tends to see a higher proportion of girls than boys continuing in the sport after about age 13.

Their hope now is the World Cup will help inspire players of all ages to continue playing at an everyday level.

"We concentrated a lot, to be honest, in the past, on the most skilled players," Muir said. "But to me, that's not what it's about. It's about people who want to play the game for their whole life. So I think (the Women's World Cup) is going to give us a chance to do that, because it raises the profile."

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca