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SINGAPORE — Footballer Kyra Taylor was back at Jalan Besar Stadium on a recent Friday, where a few weeks earlier she had experienced a giddying high followed all too soon by deep sadness.
On July 16, she made her debut for the Lionesses, the Singapore women’s national football team, in a match against Macau, scoring a brilliant goal just minutes after getting on the field as a substitute.
Unbeknown to the 18-year-old at the time, just before the game, her grandfather had suffered a brain aneurysm — where an artery balloons and fills with blood. It then ruptured and the 71-year-old slipped into a coma when the match was happening.
The teenager did not know because her mother withheld the news from her and told her only after the game. Her grandfather died two days later.
Now, Ms Taylor was being interviewed by TODAY in the lounge at Jalan Besar Stadium, three days before departing to Scotland for further studies.
Her wavy hazel hair cascaded over her black hoodie and she fidgeted while I settled down beside her. Sitting cross-legged on a cream-coloured couch, she nibbled on her fingernails nervously as we chatted.
Bursting into playful banter with her best friend and mother who were in the same room during our interview, you would never have guessed that she had experienced that roller-coaster of emotion right here just a month earlier.
That game with the Lionesses ended with the national team winning 9-0 against Macau. Ms Taylor scored the final goal in the last 10 minutes.
Her achievement was described on the Football Association of Singapore’s website as “a breath-taking long-range shot that found the back of the net — a dream debut goal”.
Mr Karim Bencherifa, head coach of the Lionesses, told TODAY: “Her vision, along with her strength in long-range passing and shooting, really stood out (in the match).”
It was an unforgettable night, for sure, but her journey with football started way before that.
“(Football) is kind of my whole personality,” Ms Taylor said with a laugh.
“I’ve been playing ever since I can remember. It’s been a long time and it’s kind of my escape, really, especially when I was schooling and had training after school. That was what I really looked forward to.”
Although she was slightly jittery at the start of the interview, the footballer warmed up when we talked more about her favourite sport while surrounded by her most ardent supporters.
She uttered so many football terms that I constantly needed to interrupt to clarify what she meant. She used abbreviations such as “UTR”, which refers to the Unleash The Roar! scholarship for promising Singapore football talents, and “WNL”, which I later learnt stands for the Women’s National League.
I was never a football fan because of how masculine I perceived the sport to be, but hearing how Ms Taylor shone on the field changed my perspective and showed me that there is space for women to take centre-stage in the sport and challenge stereotypes.
Ms Taylor was exposed to football from an early age. Her mother said that she had been kicking a ball since she was two years old because her father is a football coach and her parents used to run a football school.
She played and competed with boys until the age of 14.
Most of the time, she was the only girl on the team and “felt special”.
However, one particular incident when she was 11 made her realise that she would fit in better with an all-girls’ team.
“It’s my core memory of playing with the boys. We were doing a penalty shootout, and then I took the last penalty and scored,” she recounted.
“All the boys ran past me and celebrated the win without me. I was just walking alone and didn’t know what to do. That was when I knew that I wanted to play with the girls,” she said with a chuckle.
Ms Taylor is an alumnus of the Canadian International School. Her best friend Aaniya Mahajan, 17, used to be on the same school team.
This friend, who was sitting near Ms Taylor during the interview with TODAY, said: “We depend on her. Everytime (Kyra) wasn’t there to play, everyone would be worried.”
During the interview, I was reminded that several of my own schoolmates were national players in various sports when we were younger, and I always admired how they coped with the competing demands that they faced.
I found it difficult to imagine how they could manage their studies even after missing lessons for training when I was already struggling to cope. Were all these sacrifices worth it?
Meeting Ms Taylor showed me that they were. Being at the top of your game in a particular sport means that other aspects of your life have to take a back seat sometimes.
As long as your passion gives you purpose and opportunities for growth, winning a trophy or gaining experience playing with teammates at a match may prove to be more valuable than perfect test scores.
Yet, being in a sport dominated by men comes with its own challenges. “Everyone obviously believes that men’s teams are better, and they get a lot more views, support and salary than us,” Ms Taylor said.
She is frustrated by this, but acknowledges that support for women’s football has grown in the past few years.
“Our pay went up last year.”
And in December 2022, the national team jersey was released in a women’s cut for the first time. Before that, the Lionesses wore men’s sizes of the jersey.
Reflecting on that momentous day when she scored a goal in her debut, Ms Taylor told me that she had expected a triumphant reunion with her extended family right after the match.
They had planned to enjoy a hearty dinner together to catch up and reconnect, including with her grandfather. When she was ready to head off, she saw only her parents and brother.
Her mother, Mrs Rini Yusoff Taylor, told her that the grandfather was in hospital and that her cousins had already left the stadium to visit him.
Mrs Taylor had kept the information from her daughter to ensure that she would not lose her focus during the match against Macau.
The first thing the teenager did after hearing the news was to hug her mother.
“I couldn’t process anything. I just didn’t believe it, because I thought he was in the stands. My mother told me that he’d be there. So I thought I would see him after, when I was walking out. And then she told me,” she recounted, her voice trembling slightly.
The teenager has fond memories of eating with her grandfather as a family.
Then, she started seeing him less often as she grew older because her grandparents separated. That was why she was looking forward to meeting him again on her big day.
Mere hours earlier, she had spoken to him on the phone. He did not sound ill and told Ms Taylor how excited he was to watch her play in the national team.
It was to have been her first time seeing him after returning from a year of studying in the United States.
“See you later,” she told him at the end of the call, not knowing that these would be her last words to him she could be sure he heard.
At the hospital, the teenager hugged and kissed her unconscious grandfather, telling him that she had scored a goal for him. Two days later, he died.
A month on, despite her brave front, she is understandably still in shock. “I’m still thinking that I’m going to see him soon.”
It was almost lunch hour as our interview drew to a close, and Ms Taylor and her mother were preparing to drive to Somerset in the Orchard Road area for a meal at Pu3 restaurant.
They wanted to spend as much time together as possible before Ms Taylor’s semester begins at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, north of Edinburgh.
When away, she will miss many things about her home — especially the food. “We bought plenty of those frozen rendang (spicy meat dish) at an expo recently. I think I’ll probably take with me a whole luggage of them,” she said laughingly.
She added that her favourite food is nasi lemak (coconut-infused rice) and ayam chilli padi (spicy chicken). Her mother will give her the recipes for these dishes, and Ms Taylor intends to “FaceTime her at 9pm when it’s 2pm for me” while cooking and perhaps “set some fire alarms” in the kitchen.
Ms Taylor will also dearly miss her cat, an oversized 8.5kg Maine Coon named Pepper, which features prominently on her phone screen.
Setting her sights on the future, she is going to pursue a degree in psychology and she wants to compete in the BUCS Premier North, which is the football league system of British Universities and Colleges Sport.
She said that if she gets called up to play for the Lionesses at the Asean Football Federation Women’s Championships in November, she would fly back to Singapore for at most two weeks for the training camp.
She hopes that doing so would not affect her studies too much.
And through it all, she said that she would keep her grandfather in her heart and make him proud.
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