Texas’ Julia Grosso casts her eyes on Olympics with Team Canada

In the past year alone, playing for the Canada women’s national team has taken Julia Grosso to Spain, Portugal, England, Japan and, most important, France, where she was on the roster for the FIFA Women’s World Cup last summer as an 18-year-old.

This month, the national team came to Grosso.

The star-studded squad captained by Christine Sinclair has been training at Bold Stadium at Circuit of the Americas in preparation for Olympic qualifying, which will begin next week in Edinburg.

“It’s really nice to be in my environment,” Grosso said, although she’s not taking it for granted.

Coming into this spring, the Texas sophomore decided to put her attention fully on the national team. She’s enrolled in only one online class, a refreshing change of pace after a fall semester that saw her earn third-team All-America status with the Longhorns while juggling a full course load and a trip to Japan for an international friendly.

“Since it’s the Olympic year, there’s going to be a lot more camps, and I need to make sure I keep up with classes,” Grosso said. “Now I’m getting into more in-depth classes, so I’m not allowed to miss as much as freshman year.”

There’s a lot at stake next month for Canada and Grosso. Only two of the eight teams in the CONCACAF will qualify for this summer’s Tokyo Olympics. With the defending World Cup champion U.S. women’s national team in the fold, that leaves almost no wiggle room.

Assuming the team does qualify, each country can take only 18 players — five fewer than were on World Cup rosters. Grosso didn’t see the field in France, but she’s already made the 20-player roster named for qualifying. For a player considered part of Canada’s burgeoning next generation, this could be the summer she stakes her claim. She expects to return to Texas in the fall.

In addition to Grosso, forward Janine Beckie (Texas Tech) and defenders Ashley Lawrence and Kadeisha Buchanan (West Virginia) played in the Big 12.

In the big picture, Canada is aiming for redemption after a disappointing round of 16 exit to Sweden at the World Cup. And Sinclair, with 183 career goals, is one away from tying Abby Wambach's record of 184 international goals.

There hasn’t been much time to see the sights in Austin. On Thursday, Beckie aptly said the team is in “tournament mode.”

“We know the task is to qualify, so that’s our No. 1 right now,” said Beckie, a Texas Tech alum who plays for Manchester City in England.

Qualifying consists of two parts. Canada has been drawn into a group with St. Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica and Mexico, and it will play each of those teams Jan. 29-Feb. 4 at H-E-B Park in Edinburg. At the same time, a group consisting of the United States, Haiti, Panama and Costa Rica will play at BBVA Stadium in Houston.

From there, the top two teams from each group will advance to the semifinals and final in Carson, Calif. The winners of the semifinals will automatically qualify for the Olympics, and the losers will be eliminated.

Canada and the U.S. are heavily favored, but Jamaica showed in 2018 by qualifying for its first World Cup that the traditionally weaker opponents aren’t to be taken lightly.

“We’ve got some really different challenges in the group,” Beckie said. “We expect to win those games and to be quite dominant in those games, so that’ll be our challenge. With CONCACAF, you have a really big step up when you get to the final and expect to play the U.S.

“You go from playing what we would consider tier-two opposition to the best in the world at the moment. It’s a difficult thing to manage, but at the same time, if we get to that final that means we’re going to the Olympics, and that’s what we’re here for.”