The big city girl has moved to the small town and the change of scenery is meeting her approval.
Sarah Hilworth is originally from Vancouver and her hockey career took her to Edmonton where she suited up for five outstanding seasons with the University of Alberta Pandas , posting 50 goals and adding 50 assists.
She wasn’t done with the U of A program so she spent two years coaching under her mentor Howie Draper, helped out with a number of Team Alberta camps and has gone over to Europe for summer hockey.
“I think I’m still relatively young in the sport in terms of being a coach but I think my experience at the U of A as a player and a coach helped me get to where I want to be,” she said.
Where she is right now is behind the bench of the freshly minted women’s hockey program at Olds College.
She got the job late March and was busy gathering players almost right away. It was tough to recruit as many players had already committed to other schools but she used her contacts with the U of A program to pull a few strings and gather the building blocks of a team.
“I knew where some quality kids were and they were still hanging around and doing a bunch of camps and knowing them personally I knew that I could have a shot at bringing these really good quality kids to a program.”
She had other coaches point her in different directions and she had only one request from them when it came to the players being recommended.
“Just send me leaders who want to make a difference, especially for a first year team, that want to build that culture,” she said. “It’s going to be a lot of hard work.”
She had 21 players who showed up from B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan after scouring camps all over Canada with one recruit coming over from Finland.
She describes herself as a continual learner of the game with an eye towards coaching but it was an eye-opener making the transition from player to coach.
“As soon as I became I coach I said, wow, this is actually pretty hard. It’s not as easy as it looks. They (coaches) don’t just show up every day and put on a practice,” she said. “Learning the skill and how to teach the skill and having to know every system and how to answer questions, there’s so much to learn as a coach.”
She’s very keen on being able to come into a program and start it from the ground up, bringing in the right kids at the right time, building the right culture, she said. Its chance to put her mark on something and grow as a coach.
Another attraction was the community of Olds. Hilworth had passed through the town a couple of times while at the U of A and was interested in small town life after spending so much time in the hustle and bustle of Vancouver.
“It’s such a tight-knit community with so many amenities and the people were so welcoming,” she said.
There is quite a change in the pace of life and Hilworth says she’s learned plenty about the farming life in the time she has been a resident of Olds.
“I feel like I’m learning something new every day,” she said, but there are a few head turners as well for the city girl. “ The first week here I was at Tim Hortons and there’s a horse going through the drive through. I’ve never seen this and so that was different.”
She holds early morning practices on Tuesday with the drive to the rink accompanied by a chorus of cattle on the way to the auction market and it gave her the feeling she was being haunted by cow spirits, she said.
The laid back atmosphere also helps her in planning the direction for this young team and she says she can really connect the team to the community.
“There’s so many good community organizations that we can take the time and the effort to build and grow. I have two girls helping out with the Olds minor teams. They all want to volunteer and they’ve done a bunch of different skill camps around the community.”
She really likes the balance the ACAC strikes for students when it comes to opportunities in both sport and schooling.
“You have schools that offer university diplomas like Grant McEwen and Red Deer, then you have the technical schools like NAIT and SAIT and then we’re kind of somewhere in between them. You really have, as a league, every possible choice a kid could come in to want to take.”
The Broncos are still learning how to put together some consistency in their play but the coach says there is a bar set and it’s one which she believes this team can reach.
“For right now, my bar is to make playoffs and I think that would speak volumes in terms of a brand new team to make playoffs in their first year.”
She knows her team has a very good work ethic which should produce some good results. So just like being on the farm, you reap what you sow and the coach is convinced she is going to bring in a bumper crop this season.
