On paper at least, Canada defeated Haiti at soccer the other day. The Canadian women's team thumped their opponents 6-0 during an Olympic qualifying tournament in Vancouver.

The result was never in question. Canada stands seventh in the world rankings; Haiti is 62nd, and on the night of the game, some might have considered that generous. The game was, to put it mildly, one-sided.

Yet just by showing up, it was the girls from Haiti who came out on top. After the country's catastrophic earthquake in 2010, the process of recovery has been heartbreakingly slow.

More than 300,000 people were killed, and 1.5 million Haitians - 15 per cent of the country's population - lost their homes. Many are still living in hovels scraped from the rubble. A year after the quake, only five per cent of the wreckage had been cleared from the capital city, Port-au-Prince.

And despite a huge commitment of foreign aid, diseases that thrive on unsanitary conditions, such as cholera and typhoid, remain an ongoing threat.

Along with almost everything else, the country's soccer program was demolished. The women's head coach was killed, and 30 members of the Haitian Football Federation died when their building collapsed.

Just to field a team again, officials had to ask Haitianborn college players living abroad to come home. Ednie Limage, who studies at the University of Moncton, took over as goalkeeper.

What she and other expatriates found when they returned was grim. Nearly everyone around them had lost family or friends in the disaster.

Facilities and equipment were almost non-existent. The players lived in tents, and when each day's practice was over, they took off their cleats for the next group to wear.

The team's website, Haitiwomenssoccer.com, makes clear the extent of the hardships facing these young women. On their wish list for donations, they ask for basics such as first-aid kits and mosquito nets.

Some of those realities were apparent when the squad arrived in Vancouver. National soccer teams must come to a game with two sets of uniforms for each player. But the Haitian women had only one, and the goalkeeper lacked proper gloves.

That problem, at least, was fixed. The B.C. Soccer Association came up with $2,000 to buy a second set of uniforms, and some women on the Canadian team helped with fundraising.

Despite that, we're not going to see a repeat of last year's World Cup thriller, when the Japanese women's team came from nowhere to defeat the top-ranked U.S. squad.

That tournament was held just months after the tsunami that devastated the northeast coast of Japan. It was clear from their iron discipline, on and off the field, that the Japanese team had something to prove.

So do the Haitians. But theirs is a grindingly poor country. It will take much longer to recover.

Yet if the challenge is greater, so are the opportunities. The authorities in Haiti might not realize it, but simply by coming to compete, their young athletes go home winners - for they take with them a world of goodwill and sympathy.

Sports can be hard and unforgiving. We saw some crass behaviour at the qualifying tournament when the U.S. coach drove her players to score 14 unanswered goals against the lowly Dominican Republic.

But the Canada-Haiti night was different. That game was not about trophies or medals or a place on the podium. The stakes were much, much higher.

Showing up to represent your country is one thing. Showing up to prove it still exists is something else.

Let's wish these young women well. Despite the tremendous burdens they carry, they're doing their sport, and their country, proud.