Soccer (M) 10/19/2022 4:45:00 PM Christina Flores-Chan

Life and soccer, as captain Christian Westlaken knows it

The first time Bold men's soccer captain Christian Westlaken touched a soccer ball, he was five years old, rambunctious, and playing for a timbit-type soccer team called "The Tornadoes."

He says it was the name that really got him. "My parents asked if I wanted to play for the Tornadoes, and I was like 'Of course I wanna play for the Tornadoes, that's a sick name.' So I went."

His style of play was akin to the team's namesake, according to Westlaken's parents, Athena and Brian. He ran around the field nonstop throughout the entire game.

"That's who I was as a kid," Westlaken says, pulling up old photos on his camera roll of a smaller, blonder version of himself, wearing a jersey a few sizes too big and smiling a wide, toothless grin.

"I was loud and goofy, I wouldn't shut up," he adds. "I could talk anybody's ear off, but I was aggressively in love with my sport. All I cared about was playing well and winning."

Today, while he maintains that same energetic personality off the field, the captain is composed and focused on game days. He'll crack a few jokes on the way to the pitch, show up with a smile on his face—complete with grown-in, adult set of teeth, and wave hello to his parents, who are at every game in the stands. But once he comes out of the locker room with his jersey on and his neon orange cleats, he's locked in.

To his teammates, Westlaken is an open, easy-to-talk-to and quietly confident leader. The rookies don't hesitate to ask him for guidance, leaning on the 24-year-old veteran for all kinds of insight on and off the pitch, from where to find available parking at away games to whether or not they should redshirt one season.

If you were to ask the captain himself what sort of leader he is, his ears would turn red and he'd tell you he doesn't know how to answer questions like that. He isn't used to people wanting to interview him yet.

"I just don't like the attention very much," he says, laughing nervously, "which is weird because I agreed to be here doing this."

If you sit with him a little longer and allow him to truly "talk your ear off", however, you'll eventually pick up on the distinct learned qualities and pieces of advice that helped shape Westlaken into a strong leader, which he now passes on to his teammates as they go throughout the season. Here are some of those pieces:

Work hard and be a good person

At the age of ten, the midfielder joined the North Toronto Nitros after finishing ninth in the league with a previous, losing team and feeling "absolutely livid" about his teammates' acceptance (and lack of shared disdain) of their ranking. He found a second home in the club, playing under coach Marko Milanovic, who is now also an assistant coach for Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU)'s men's soccer program.

Westlaken says it was dedication and extra practice time that kept him competing at high level soccer as he got older, "because it definitely wasn't my skill."

Westlaken in his younger years, dribbling the ball up the field (Photo courtesy of Athena Westlaken)

As he moved up in the sport, he focused on going as far as he could with soccer and putting 110 per cent of his time and energy onto the pitch.

It wasn't sustainable. In his senior year of high school, Westlaken suffered a severe, season-ending groin injury that kept him from playing not only that year, but the following season in his first year at TMU as well, after it reappeared. Throughout the first two years of his time at the school and for what felt like the first time in his life, the captain did not play.

"It was like the one thing I'd worked my whole life for was gone," he says, recounting the months he'd spent doing little more than commuting to and from school from the Danforth and missing his sport.

"But soccer had taught me not to give up, to keep working hard until I achieved my goals. Quitting would have meant abandoning the values I'd had instilled in me since I was that obnoxious child who would stop at nothing for what he wanted. And it didn't feel right to quit on him."

He made a full recovery and was invited to play for the Bold by the time he began his third year.

Today, he tells his team that while a lot of things in life just happens to them, there are also a few things they have control over: Being a good person and working as hard as you can to achieve your goals.

"If you take responsibility over your life," he says, "you'll find your results will be much more in favour of whatever it is that you wanted than if you were to blame what happens to you on anything but yourself."

Calm down, sometimes it's just a game

While Westlaken was in recovery, the midfielder continued to train at North Toronto on school nights after class and play for their men's league. He says before a game, he would blast Skrillex on full volume in his headphones, hoping the thumping electronic bass would fill him up with energy.

"More often than not, I'd have pumped myself up so much getting ready that I'd be tired and flat by the time I got on the field," he says.

One evening, his former coach Herman approached him after watching him attack the ball tirelessly.

"Herman told me to try to stop running so fast, to calm down," he remembers.

And Westlaken listened, in more ways than one. On the field, the player began to exhibit more thought behind his movements, playing smarter instead of always playing harder. Off the field, he spent more time with family and friends and prioritized his business classes (later graduating in 2021 with a degree in business management). He also taught himself how to play the guitar, a tactic he often used to wind himself down after a day of school and training.

"It was my crutch during one of the hardest times in my soccer career," he says.

By the time Westlaken joined the Bold, he had matured as both a player and a person.

Now, in preparation for a game, he'll plug his earbuds in and listen to his acoustic music playlist, which features a ridiculous amount of Ed Sheeran and Luke Combs, to warm up.

"Staying calm and putting things in perspective actually improves your ability to think clearly on the field," he says. "And knowing in the back of your mind that the outcome of a game isn't the be-all, end-all of your life will keep you calmer throughout those 90 minutes."

Stay humble and grounded in the present

"One thing I've learned from soccer and now being in the workforce," Westlaken says, referring to his full-time job with charity-focused non-profit CanadaHelps, "is that it doesn't always help to talk about all of your goals in the future or in life."

He explains that the temporary high people get by telling others about what they're planning on accomplishing, results in them craving the satisfaction of how others react to their goals rather than actually seeing them through.

As a child who often spoke before thinking, Westlaken says he knows the feeling all too well.

"So now, to the team and the younger guys, I'll tell them, 'Look, if you want to score a goal today, you don't need to talk about it. Just go out and do it."

And don't worry so much if your goals, whether they be in soccer or in life, don't align right away.

"Sometimes my parents and friends will point out that I have this blind faith in myself, an ability to not be stressed in situations where I should be, for some reason," he says, before adding with a laugh, "I don't know if that's the best habit in the world."

But what he does know, he says, is that worrying about the future, as opposed to bragging about it, also doesn't get you any closer to your goals.

"So work hard and don't lose sight of what's important, but don't take yourself or other things too seriously either," Westlaken says.

"There's more to life than winning and losing a soccer game. You'll miss out if you're too focused on what you put out on the field, rather than what you take from those experiences and how you apply them in other aspects of life."

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Players Mentioned

#5 Christian Westlaken: D; 6' 0"; 4

Players Mentioned

#5 Christian Westlaken
: 6' 0"; 4
: D

Players Mentioned

#5 Christian Westlaken

Players Mentioned

#5 Christian Westlaken