In about 10 days’ time, a team of eight street soccer players, brought together by backgrounds in homelessness and disadvantage, will represent Australia at the 2023 Homeless World Cup.

The Big Issue Street Socceroos are heading towards Sacramento, California where the Cup will take place on 8 July. Among them is Caity, the only Canberran, and the only woman on the team.

Her teammates may tower over her in size, but Caity welcomes her opponents to underestimate her. It only makes it that much easier to score.

The 28-year-old laughs that while her Olympic dreams may never come true, that just makes it all the more magical to be nominated for the Street Socceroos.

With ruddy cheeks from the cold Canberra morning, and grinning ear-to-ear as Minister for Sport, Anika Wells MP, presented her with the national team’s jersey on the lawns of Parliament House, one would never imagine the storms Caity has weathered to be here.

Caity joined the Canberra team of Big Issue’s nationwide Community Street Soccer Program in 2019. Players are recruited by referrals from homelessness and mental health services and are often Big Issue vendors themselves.

For Caity, it was her TRec worker at local intensive outreach program, Transition to Recovery, who recommended she play.

“I had just been discharged from another hospital admission,” Caity recalls. “At first, I was so apprehensive because I hadn’t played soccer since I was a kid.”

Since then, Wednesday Street Soccer has become the anchor of her week. “They can’t get rid of me now!”

“It puts something super positive and consistent in my life. If it’s a bad day, it gets better. If it’s a good day, it gets better,” says Caity.

“It’s such a welcoming and beautiful environment. It doesn’t matter if you kick it out completely. You’ll still get a clap if you were aiming for the goals.”

Scoring community goals

Since launching in 2004, the Street Soccer Program has supported over 10,500 participants. National coach, George Halkias, ran the pilot program in the Public Housing Estates in Melbourne.

Almost 20 years and 10 Homeless World Cups later, and he says his greatest achievement is seeing players move onto “bigger and better things” after making real changes in their lives.

“Not everybody is smooth sailing. Relapse is normal,” says Mr Halkias.

“Ultimately team sports provide a sense of purpose and belonging that is fundamentally important to every human being.

“But also, between the coaches and the players, they’re around like-minded people who want to make similar changes.

“When you’re around people that drive you to be better and healthier, you can’t help but join in the spirit.”

The program has been available to Canberrans since 2008.

“For the past 10 years, I’ve been struggling with severe mental health issues,” says Caity. “I’ve been in and out of hospitals since mid-2015.

“It’s made some of my living situations unsafe.” At the moment, Caity resides in a transitional program for women while simultaneously earning her university degree in Middle Eastern Studies and Public Policy.

“It has meant a lot of instability. Going into hospital, sometimes for three-month-long admissions.

“I’ve struggled with it, and I will continue to struggle with it, probably for the rest of my life,” she says.

“For me, team sports have just been so crucial to my self-confidence and general wellbeing,” says Caity. “I’ve made friends that I see outside of soccer. It’s so multi-faceted in its benefits.

“That being said, sometimes it’s not as easy as ‘Just push through’. There are times when you can’t get out of bed, and you can’t go to soccer.

“The advice that I would give to someone who’s thinking about joining a team would be to just do what you can.

“Don’t feel guilty if you can’t go; those days don’t matter. Because on the days that you do get there, you’ll remember how good it is and the benefits you get from it, and that makes it easier to go back next week.”

She smiles. “No pressure. Just building on positive experiences.”

Caity, who has never been to America, is exhilarated by the opportunity to play in Sacramento, and to finish the final semester of her degree upon her return – hopefully lining her up to return to Parliament House for work one day.

“We’ll see,” she laughs. “As long as I can play soccer on Wednesdays, that’s all that matters.”

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