While woman’s tackle football is still new to many in Canada and across the world, local woman Chantal Vogel is a seasoned veteran. This past summer Vogel travelled to Finland to play on Team Canada at the International Federated American Football (IFAF) Women’s World Championship Tournament, an event that only takes place once every three years.

Vogel began playing football when she was just 11 years old, now 22, the Weyburnite has spent her football career training in Canadian Football League (CFL) rules, however, in Finland the Defensive Line was introduced to a new style of play, Vogel had to quickly adapt to National Football League (NFL) rules. 

“It was definitely an adjustment, the one thing that I really struggled with was the one-yard rule. I would constantly line up a yard away, and then a couple seconds before the play, I would be like, oh yeah, I’m supposed to be up a little bit. However, I really liked playing that way, especially as a D-lineman it gives such a chance to have an advantage over your opponent,” shared Vogel. 

Team Canada kicked off the IFAF tournament by playing Australia. 

“It was a really exciting game, Australia has come so far, they are a recent addition to IFAF, and since the last tournament four years ago, they have improved so much, they play a different game there that they like to call Gritty or Footie, the way they play football is so different from any other team we’ve ever experienced because football is so new to them as a country.” 

The final score against Australia was 33 to 6 for Canada. While there was a wide scoring gap against the Aussies, the next games would prove to be much tighter matches. Against Great Britain, a late touchdown gave GB the win with a final score of 20 to 13. In the bronze medal match against Finland, the teams took turns leading the way, however, in the end, the victory went to Finland with a final score of 19 to 17. 

Chantal Vogel

"It's not as good as we wanted to do, but honestly, I see it as a positive, because the last time Canada went to World's we pretty handedly got second, and this time we played insane levels of football against teams that were so good and so far improved from the last world tournament. I see this as an opportunity for Canada to level up our game, because we know we have that competition now, even though we got fourth I'm pretty excited about the level of women's football all over the world."

It's not a surprise that Vogel is not deterred by a challenge, recently she graduated with a degree in Kinesiology, but due to her commitments to Team Canada, she is taking a year off from university and next summer she is applying for med-school.