Sophie Schmidt is headed to the Olympics for a second time.
The 23-year-old midfielder from Abbotsford helped the Canadian senior women’s soccer team punched its ticket to the 2012 Summer Games in London on Friday, as they knocked off Mexico 3-1 in the semifinals of the CONCACAF qualifying tournament.
Playing before a partisan crowd of 22,954 fans at B.C. Place Stadium in Vancouver, Christine Sinclair scored twice and Melissa Tancredi added a single in the victory, while Schmidt played 75 solid minutes before being replaced by Brittany Timko.
The victory clinched Schmidt’s second trip to the Olympics – she also wore the Maple Leaf in 2008 in Beijing.
On Sunday evening, the Canadians dropped a 4-0 decision to the United States, the top-ranked team in the world, in the CONCACAF final. Nothing more than national pride was at stake, though, as both teams had already qualified for the Olympics.