Long before Dayne St. Clair was stopping goals, he was setting them.
When the goalkeeper for Canada’s national team was about 12 years old, his mentor and first goalkeeper coach, Jerry Pennant, told him to write down his goals.
Written in pencil atop St. Clair’s list of long-term goals was, “Play for the Canadian men’s national team.”
Having reached that goal — and others he wrote down more than a decade ago — St. Clair was recently shown his original list when he reconnected with Pennant.
“He still had the documents that I wrote when I was 12 or 13,” St. Clair said in an interview on the NBC podcast “My New Favorite Futbolista.” “And being able to kind of see the bigger picture of the things now, 15 years later, and to see some of the things that we talked about or I even wrote down as a kid that was feeling ambitious, and said, ‘I want to go to a World Cup.’ At that time, Canada wasn’t really a part of the conversation.”
St. Clair helped Canada enter the conversation, making his second consecutive World Cup appearance with the team. Getting there might not have been possible had it not been for a conversation he had years prior, when Pennant suggested he become a goalkeeper.
St. Clair, a defender on his club team at the time, began training with Pennant to play keeper and soon made it his primary position. Pennant said he had to compete against six other goalkeepers in his age group.
“At one point in time, he was ranked as sixth and seventh,” Pennant said. “And over the years, he had to put in the work to propel above the rest.”
Pennant, in addition to making St. Clair write down his goals, would have him draw sketches of the lessons they learned on the pitch.
“I used to check for understanding,” Pennant said. “I used to say to them, ‘We just did this session. OK, can you sketch it out to your understanding? What did we do? What did I say?’”
St. Clair recalls having to write down what he learned and what he can improve on.
“And of course, at the time as a 12-year-old, you’re like kind of it’s more homework and it was tedious,” he said. “But he would check in every now and then and ask us like, ‘How’s it going?’”
St. Clair’s relationship with Pennant helped him not only go on to become a future MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, a teammate of Lionel Messi’s with Inter Miami and a World Cup competitor but also a mentor himself by working with children in the community.
“When I’m involved, I feel like I’m giving kids an opportunity and I’m being able to give back to the people of tomorrow,” he said. “Youth mentorship, especially kids, you can be molded at such a young age, and those little moments can last a lifetime and really change the trajectory of someone’s life because maybe they learned something in that specific moment that helped them, or they found hope or opportunity because of one of these events … One second of my time could mean a lifetime to somebody else.”
The guidance and trust he developed through mentorship further built upon the principles he learned from his parents while growing up in Canada. His mother worked in community centers, and his father came from the small Caribbean island of Trinidad, which he says values the importance of community and helping your neighbors.
“Whether it’s the last shirt on your back or your only shirt, being able to kind of give it to someone that may need it more than you has always been something that’s kind of ingrained in me from a young age, for sure,” he said.
While St. Clair was playing for the Minnesota United, he began volunteering his time with Big Brothers Big Sisters, a community program that pairs children with mentors.
“I think sometimes as an athlete, you get that superhuman from kids that they look at you as you’re not real, you know what I mean?” he said. “So, when you’re able to kind of be there in the community, it shows them I’m similar to you in so many ways.”
St. Clair takes part in events and outreach with the children — even leading soccer drills at a match hangout.
“I think especially in sports, there is kind of this built-in mentorship model with their coaches, with veteran players,” Micaela Olson-MacGregor of Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities said. “And so, I feel like Dayne can share that experience with our littles and they can see that like it takes work. It takes planning, it takes goal setting to get to where you want to be.”
Which is why St. Clair’s mentor made him set his goals at a young age by writing them down. And to this day, he’s still striving to reach them.
Written on the third line of his list from all those years ago is, “Win the World Cup with Canada.”
You can tune in to “My New Favorite Futbolista” wherever you listen to podcasts, with episodes featuring St. Clair and more World Cup stars.
