Cindy Walsh

Cindy Walsh
Personal information
Date of birth	September 13, 1979 (age 44)
Place of birth	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Height	1.68 m (5 ft 6 in)
Position(s)	Defender
Youth career
	Saint-Bruno
	FC Brossard
	CS Longueuil
2000	FC Sélect Rive-Sud
College career
Years	Team
2000–2003	Hartford Hawks
Senior career*
Years	Team
2001	Laval Dynamites
2002	Toronto Inferno
2003–2006	Western Mass Lady Pioneers
2007–2010	Laval Comets
2012–2014	Laval Comets
2019	FC Sélect Rive-Sud
2022	CS St-Hubert
International career
1999	Canada U20
1998–2010	Canada
Managerial career
2013–2015	Laval Comets
2016–2019	AS Varennes AAA
2020–2022	CS St-Hubert (women)
	*Club domestic league appearances and goals, correct as of July 10, 2022

Cindy Walsh (born September 13, 1979) is a Canadian retired soccer player who played as a defender. She has been a member of the Canada women's national team.

College career

She attended the University of Hartford,^[2] playing for the NCAA Division 1 Hartford Hawks on a full athletic scholarship. She started 80 games, missing only 3 because of emergency surgery to remove a ruptured appendix in 2000. She was voted Rookie of the Year^[3] and named to the conference 1st team in 2000, 2001 and 2003 and named 2nd team in 2002.^[4] She had a career high of 11 assists and 7 goals in 2002, and played a variety of positions from defender, midfielder and striker.^[5]

Club career

Between 2001 and 2014 she competed in the now defunct semi-professional W-League, which was among the top leagues in North America. In 13 years she played with the Laval Dynamites, Toronto Inferno, Western Mass Lady Pioneers, and Laval Comets.^[6] She was named to the W-League All-Conference team in 2008. She was also named league all-star team and named as W-League Defender of the Year in 2012.^[7] In 2019, she played with FC Sélect Rive-Sud in the Première Ligue de soccer du Québec.^[8]

International career

She joined the Canadian senior national team when she was 18 years old.^[9] In 1998, she played in the CONCACAF Women's Championship, which they won and secured a qualifying spot for the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup.^[10] She was captain of the U20 Women’s national team in 1999 at the Pan American games, participating in all games, and helping the team to a 4th place finish. In 2010, Walsh was called back to the senior national team for a training camp in Cyprus and helped contribute to winning the 2010 Cyprus Cup after a 10 year absence with the team.^[11]

Coaching career

She began her coaching career with the Laval Comets in 2013, serving as a player-coach,^[12] making it all the way to the W-League finals in first season and being named coach of the year.^[7] From 2009 to 2016, she was assistant technical director at the Association régionale de soccer de la Rive-Sud and School Programs Educator at Collège-Français de Longueuil, De Mortagne School in Boucherville and Heritage Regional High School.^[13]^[14] She has also led the women's selection for the Quebec Games on several occasions^[10] and work at Soccer Quebec's High Performance Center.^[15]

In 2020, she was announced as the head coach of the women's team of CS St-Hubert, making them the first club in the PLSQ with a female head coach.^[16]