Marlo Sweatman, BA '16, challenges Italy's Valentina Cernoia during the FIFA Woman's World Cup
On June 9, 2019, soccer fans worldwide settled in to watch the third matchday of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
More than 17,000 packed the Stade des Alpes stands in picturesque Grenoble, at the foot of the towering French Alps. While they waved flags, chanted, and sang themselves hoarse, millions more around the world tuned in on television or online—including an estimated 19.7 million Brazilians watching on Globo, the largest TV network in Latin America.
Out of the tunnel and onto the lush green pitch strode Brazil. The 2007 World Cup runners-up and seven-time Copa América Femina champions were ranked 10th in the world and had a starting lineup boasting 916 combined international appearances and 206 combined goals. And that was without Marta, the best female footballer of all time with 107 goals and six FIFA World Player of the Year honors to her name, who sat on the bench recovering from a thigh injury.
Walking alongside A Seleção (“the National Squad”), step for step, were their opponents: Jamaica’s Reggae Girlz, the lowest-ranked team at the tournament. Leading the Reggae Girlz out of the tunnel was 22-year-old captain and center-back Konya Plummer. Behind her was goalkeeper Sydney Schneider, who had just finished her sophomore year at UNC-Wilmington.
Not far behind them was midfielder Marlo Sweatman, BA ’16, who was starting a World Cup match just three years after earning her general social science degree from the UO’s College of Arts and Sciences.
“That was just unreal,” said Sweatman. “I was able to start, so just walking out to the anthem, walking out to the fans—that was just unbelievable. It was a dream come true.”
Brazil won 3-0, with forward Christiane scoring all three goals. In a tournament that made headlines for the USA’s 13-0 win over Thailand, a three-goal loss barely registered; the experience, though, made a lasting impact on the Jamaicans.
“Being a first time country here, we really felt that,” Sweatman said. “We felt the nerves, we felt the pressure. I think the coaches felt it a little bit, and our federation felt it. Other countries could go in having played four years ago, and they knew what was going to happen. As a first time country, I think maybe we have a lot to learn, but we’ll do better the next time we go. But just being there as a player was a dream come true.”
The Reggae Girlz line up for a team photo before their FIFA Women's World Cup opener against Brazil. Sweatman is in the second row, second from the right.
A dream come true for the players, it was the culmination of a decade that, for the national team, could best be described as a nightmare; as recently as six years ago, the Reggae Girlz didn’t even exist.
After Jamaica failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics in 2008—no team from the Caribbean has ever qualified—the Jamaican Football Federation (JFF) disbanded the side entirely, deciding instead to throw its full support behind the men’s team—a team that has also never competed in the Olympics, and hasn’t qualified for a World Cup since 1998.
Without the backing of the JFF, the Reggae Girlz were not able to enter the 2010 CONCACAF Women’s Championship to try and to qualify for the 2011 World Cup. Due to the team’s inactivity, FIFA removed the Jamaicans from the world rankings altogether.
In 2014, Cedella Marley, daughter of music legend Bob Marley, intervened and took on the role of fairy godmother. Marley is well known as a woman who gets things done—the eldest biological child of the reggae legend was a founding member of the Grammy-winning Melody Makers, is the CEO of record label Tuff Gong International, is the acting director of the nonprofit Bob Marley Foundation, and as a fashion designer has launched multiple clothing lines and outfitted Jamaica’s Olympic track and field stars.
Marley helped the JFF reform the Reggae Girlz, recorded a song with brothers Damian and Stephen to raise public awareness and funds, and started the Strike Hard for the Reggae Girlz campaign to raise money for the team. That was enough to get the side back on the pitch, but only just. Jamaica competed in the 2014 CONCACAF Women’s Championship, but did so on a shoestring budget—the players couldn’t swap jerseys after matches, because they did not have enough of their own uniform to trade with opponents. The JFF hired Hue Menzies, an English-born Jamaican-American former pro player, to coach the Reggae Girlz, but only as a volunteer—no money was set aside for his salary. The team failed to qualify for the 2015 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympics, and did not play another match for three years.
For the second time in less than a decade, FIFA dropped the Reggae Girlz from its rankings altogether.
Sweatman helps an opponent up during a World Cup match this past summer
But while the Jamaican national team was adrift in the international wilderness again, Sweatman was going from strength to strength.
She transferred to the UO after one year at Florida State University, and while the Reggae Girlz were lacing up their cleats in Chicago and Washington, DC, during the 2014 CONCACAF Women’s Championship, Sweatman was in Tucson and Pullman with the Ducks. She made 17 starts for the UO that year, then made 18 as a junior in 2015. In 2016, when the Reggae Girlz disbanded again, Sweatman graduated in the spring as a two-time Pac-12 All-Academic honorable mention, then started 20 matches for the UO in the fall.
At the end of the season UO head coach Kat Mertz connected Sweatman with an agent, and she signed a contract with Töcksfors IF in Sweden and left Eugene for Europe.
“That was a big adjustment,” Sweatman said. “Apart from the language and culture differences, the whole style of soccer is completely different in Europe. Whereas in America they really focus on athleticism, fitness, speed, and strength, in Europe they really focus on technical ability and style of soccer. That fits me better, because I’m more of a true footballer in that I’m not as athletic as I am technical.”
During Sweatman’s first year in Töcksfors, a small Swedish town with only one restaurant and barely more than 1,000 residents, she lived with her teammates and honed her skills as a professional. Later that year she signed with PEC Zwolle in the Netherlands, and in early 2018 got a call from the Jamaican national team.
“I ended up [finishing the season] early and flying down to Jamaica and going into camp,” said Sweatman, the daughter of Edward and Jamaica-born mother Beverly. “It was a good experience. I knew two or three of the girls from when I played Under-20, but it was completely different.”
Sweatman was no stranger to the Jamaicans, having made eight appearances for the Under-20 side in 2011 and 2012. During that time, the entire team stayed together in one house with 20 bunk beds. There was no water at practice, and the players did their own laundry.
“There was just no funding whatsoever,” Sweatman said.
This time around though, with Menzies at the helm and Marley backing the team, the atmosphere had completely changed.
The team had training camps in Jamaica and Orlando, and stayed in hotels throughout. There was a nutritionist and a trainer, and the players enjoyed—or, at least, reaped the benefits of—an ice bath after practice and workouts.
“For Caribbeans, the culture is pretty laid back,” said Sweatman. “If they say training’s at 8, that means training’s at 8:45 or 9. You’re always late. The biggest thing was that they stepped up professionalism. When they said training was at 8, it was at 8. They really changed the culture of the whole team.”
At the 2018 CONCACAF Women’s Championship qualification, the Reggae Girlz won the Caribbean Zone and advanced to the CONCACAF Women’s Championship later that year. At the start of the year, the team had been unranked in FIFA’s rankings. By the end of CONCACAF qualification they had climbed to No. 71, behind the likes of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. When the championship started they had crept up to No. 64, passing Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan and nestling behind Equatorial Guinea and Iran.
Needing a top-three finish at the women’s championship to qualify for the World Cup, Jamaica upset Costa Rica and beat Cuba—with Sweatman scoring the final goal in the win over the Cubans—to finish second in its group and advance to the semifinals. There, they matched up with the US Women’s National Team, ranked No. 1 in the world. The USA did what the USA does and promptly won handily, meaning Jamaica’s hopes and dreams rested on the outcome of 90 minutes against Panama.
Well, 120 minutes, as the teams went into extra time tied 1-1, then traded a goal apiece over the next 30 minutes. That sent the match to penalty kicks, which the Reggae Girlz won 4-2 to advance to France.
“It was amazing,” said Sweatman. “To be one of the players that qualified on that historic team? That was just unreal to me. That means more in my heart than actually playing in a World Cup.”
Sweatman waves to the crowd following Jamaica's World Cup match against Italy
In qualifying for the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, Jamaica made history not once but twice. Not only was it the team’s first-ever World Cup; it was the first time any Caribbean nation had qualified for the World Cup. Forget being role models in Jamaica—the Reggae Girlz were role models throughout the entire region.
“The whole journey and the whole fight meant so much to me and the country,” Sweatman said. “That moment of qualifying meant everything.”
The team logged serious miles in the leadup to the World Cup, playing friendlies in Jamaica, South Africa, and Scotland. Marley traveled with the team as its ambassador and No. 1 fan, and the media followed close behind; one journalist called the Reggae Girlz the “Cool Runnings of soccer,” prompting Menzies to jokingly suggest Denzel Washington should play him in the movie.
“Because we were such a historic team, media was crazy,” Sweatman said. “Some days we couldn’t train, we had too much media stuff going on. A week before the World Cup we were in London just doing media stuff and we couldn’t train at all.”
The team’s reward for making its first-ever World Cup was a group that included No. 6 Australia, No. 10 Brazil, and No. 15 Italy. The Reggae Girlz, understandably, went 0-3 in France, and were outscored by a combined 12-1.
Sweatman started against Brazil and came off the bench as a substitute against Italy, before sitting out against Australia altogether as Menzies continued to rotate his players (of the 23 players on Jamaica’s World Cup roster, 20 played in the tournament). While the team was unable to come away with a win, they did have the experience of a lifetime.
“To be there was surreal,” said Sweatman. “It made you think—all of the hard work, all of the sacrifices, and all of the adversity we went through as a country and a team paid off.”
When the tournament ended and the teams went their separate way though, the Jamaicans found the media attention still focused on them for an entirely different reason. While the US Women’s National Team is taking on US Soccer in a fight for equal pay, the Reggae Girlz found themselves squaring off against the Jamaican Football Federation just to get paid at all.
The history-making players became the first Jamaican women to sign football contracts when they put pen to paper in March and April. Under the terms of the contracts, they were supposed to be back-paid from January, and were supposed to receive payments on the 14th of each month. Only, by the time the World Cup came and went, none of the payments had come through. The Reggae Girlz duly headed to the Pan American Games, where they finished seventh, and following the tournament the players announced they were boycotting the national side.
“It blew up pretty big,” Sweatman said. “A lot of overseas news got into it, ESPN got into it, and there was a big argument between our coaches and the federation.”
After three weeks with no players, and qualifiers for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo on the horizon, the JFF relented in late September and began paying the players.
“It feels very good,” said Sweatman. “It feels really good to know you’re making a difference, not only for your own staff and players, but for the future generations to come up. We’re all very happy; we deserve that money, and everyone’s happy when you get your money.”
Sweatman, far right in her UO soccer shorts, trains with the Szent Mihály club in Hungary
Sweatman wasn’t part of the team participating in the Pan American Games, though her absence was not because she was getting a head start on the boycott. Once the World Cup ended, she packed her bags and headed to Hungary to begin the 2019-20 season with her new club, Szent Mihály. The side finished last in its division last year, but with a new stadium, new sponsors, and a host of new players—including now-World-Cup-veteran Sweatman—hopes are higher this year.
“They’re really trying to improve it,” she said.
Beyond that, no one knows what the future holds. Jamaica’s first Olympic qualifying match is on September 30, and in the 24-year-history of women’s soccer at the Olympics, they have never qualified.
But, as Sweatman and the Reggae Girlz proved this year, there’s a first time for everything.
After all, as Cedella's father once sang:
Don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing’s gonna be all right.
Right?
- Damian Foley, UO Communications