FRISCO, Texas -- There are few similarities between soccer and figure skating, an invasion of winter-like weather in this part of Texas notwithstanding, but one springs to mind as the United States and Canada prepare to play in the final of the CONCACAF Women's Championship.
The compulsory portion of the program is done. Now the real competition for medals begins.
For both teams, coming off easy semifinal wins that guaranteed their places in the World Cup next summer, the most important date left on the 2018 calendar isn't Wednesday but Dec. 8. That day's World Cup draw is the next major item on the checklist -- not just learning group opponents but the possible paths around France and through other contenders in the knockout round. Winning the CONCACAF title this week won't hurt either team's résumé, but there is also little chance of either slipping out of the draw's all-important top pot of eight teams.
So yes, this is a mostly meaningless game. That isn't to say it doesn't matter quite a lot.
Forget regional titles. These are the kinds of games the U.S. women need in the next nine months to be ready to retain their world title. And the kind of games Canada now provides -- and which it increasingly appears our neighbor to the north will continue to provide well into the foreseeable future.
While the United States hasn't lost to Canada since 2001 and is 48-3-7 in the all-time series, the rivalry that reached maturity in an epic Olympic encounter six years ago is real.
Even if the trash talk takes the form of Princeton alums making metric slams.
"You're talking about two teams that want to beat each other and aren't going to give up -- I'm not going to say an inch, I'm going to make it metric -- a centimeter on the field to each other," Canada's Diana Matheson said after her team's semifinal win. "They're always great games against these guys, and it's a rivalry, a derby."
But take out the competitive passion, if perhaps not blazing animosity, and the series against Canada also matters as a dispassionate bellwether. Right across the border is a reminder of how rapidly the rest of the world is closing in on the United States in women's soccer.
Ups and downs along the way notwithstanding, the years since the 2011 World Cup have been a renaissance for the U.S. women, a golden era of memorable moments and massively popular. And still Canada has gained ground. Indeed, a quarterfinal exit at home in the 2015 World Cup aside, the Canadians took more medals out of the past two Olympics than the Americans.
They reasonably aspire to the podium every time they enter a tournament. That wasn't always so.
Megan Rapinoe has been playing Canada longer than almost anyone on the U.S. roster -- the second game she played for the United States was against Canada in 2006. With long-ball coach Even Pellerud to match, those Canadian teams were fierce but limited. The current version decidedly isn't.
"They kind of have this new crop of players that I think they should feel very excited about," Megan Rapinoe said. "A little bit more technical, better footballers, than I think they've had.
"I think they've always had that grit and tough physical play, but they're matching that with a much nicer style, I guess, and players that are really dynamic in attack and defense and can get up and down the field and create havoc all over."
She mentioned Kadeisha Buchanan, 22, and Ashley Lawrence, 23, and how their youth belied their experience that includes the 2015 World Cup. She ticked off Jessie Fleming's name, as everyone must when it comes to Canada and one of the sport's emerging exceptional talents.
Then she paused ever so briefly, as if aware that any conversation about Canada can last only so long before someone needs to bring up Christine Sinclair's name.
"Sinc's not young," Rapinoe chuckled of her former college teammate at the University of Portland and longtime international foil. "But she's still very exciting, such a good player."
It does always come back to Sinclair, who will likely enter the World Cup as the all-time leading goal scorer in international soccer. After scoring twice in the semifinal against Panama, she needs just eight goals to break Abby Wambach's record of 184 goals. Now 35 and going strong, Sinclair is the only player on either roster who played the last time Canada beat the U.S. women.
Naturally she scored in that 2001 encounter.
"She really sets the tone for myself, the other leaders on the team and everyone that plays for Canada, and I think the culture you see in the Canadian team really comes from her," Matheson said after the semifinal. "For a Canadian to [break the record] -- we don't have a history of beating teams 7-0. Ten years ago we weren't doing that. The number of goals Canadians score in general isn't huge, and Sinc has just been an anomaly her entire career."
An anomaly but also a harbinger.
Canada has succeeded where Brazil has largely failed. Each was gifted a generational talent at a preposterously young age, Sinclair for Canada and Marta for Brazil. Mostly because of a lack of commitment from the powers that be, rather than a lack of talent to develop, Brazil's future after Marta moves on is unclear.
Canada's future without Sinclair, painful as that moment will be, is already playing alongside her.
"Where the team is now, I think it's already turned the corner on the generation of players that's coming through," Matheson continued. "We kind of had the same generation leading the way for a long time. And now I feel the Jessie Flemings and Ashley Lawrences and Kadeisha Buchanans are going to carry this team."
She could have gone on to name Janine Beckie, Julia Grosso, Adriana Leon and more.
So the U.S. women will be challenged for the first time this tournament. With the way the Americans are playing, not just against overmatched CONCACAF opponents but dating back to the summer, it would be a disappointment to lose on home turf in Texas. But it wouldn't be an embarrassment.
That's the challenge for the United States. This can be the most talented team Rapinoe has been a part of, as she said after the semifinal, and still not a prohibitive favorite next summer.
Rapinoe turned to something Serena Williams said by way of explanation. The tennis champion noted that every time she takes the court she gets the best an opponent can offer because Williams brings that out of them.
Do that for enough years and eventually the world will rise to the challenge.
"It forces this excellence out of her, this drive out of her," Rapinoe said of Williams. "If nobody else was getting better, I'm sure we'd be a little more complacent. Just competitively, we want to continue to get better, but we also know that teams are right there, right in the mix."
The United States and Canada should both be in the mix next summer. And it's why Wednesday's meeting here isn't a final as much as a beginning.