What happened on March 2nd in Red Deer, Alberta was so special that a commemorative photo is appropriate.

Carla MacLeod, Noémie Marin and Delaney Collins – all of whom have extensive experience as players and coaches in Canada’s National Women’s Program – posed in front of the Servus Arena to celebrate guiding their respective provinces to a medal at the 2019 Canada Winter Games to have.

Team Alberta, led by MacLeod, won the gold medal on home soil with a 2-1 win over Team Quebec, led by Marin. Earlier in the day, Collins led Team British Columbia to a 5-4 win over Team Ontario to take the bronze. This was the first time at the Canada Games and Women’s Under-18 National Championship that all three medal-winning teams were coached by women.

Sharing the ice with MacLeod and Marin at the awards ceremony is a memory Collins will cherish for a long time.

“I think we appreciate each other so much that it was a proud moment for me to see the three medals – gold, silver and bronze – awarded to head coaches who have worked for Hockey Canada. »

Bonds between the three are strong: Collins and MacLeod played together at the IIHF World Women’s Championship; MacLeod and Marin sat together behind the bench for Canada’s national women’s development team in 2017/18; and Collins and Marin were Canada’s assistant coaches at the 2015 IIHF World Women’s U18 Championship.

Collins, MacLeod and Marin, who were all hired about a year before the Canada Games began, knew what it took to win at Red Deer. The most important task for each of them was to create a cohesive team of 20 players capable of achieving the golden goal.

MacLeod and his coaching staff knew Alberta had to be the hardest working team.

“We’ve taken that approach and that mentality to everything we’ve done,” said the two-time Olympic gold medalist, who also leads the women’s Midget prep team at Edge School in Calgary. “We had a slogan that said, ‘Team culture is hard work, and hard work is team culture.’ »

The disciplined style of play was evident throughout the tournament. Another element of Alberta’s success was composure. The players didn’t let down a loss in two of their first three games. They just kept building their form and their hard work paid off with victories against British Columbia (2-1 in overtime in the semifinals) and Quebec in the playoffs.

Quebec went 5-0 en route to the gold medal game. Marin, who coaches the women’s team at John Abbott College in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que., insisted on having resilient players on his team. His decision paid off as his team made comebacks in the first two games.

“When you’re 2-0 down after seven minutes it’s hard to find the resilience to get up and fight and I think our girls have shown a lot of character coming back into these games after a difficult start,” she said.

Quebec passed its greatest test when it withstood 38 shots from Team Ontario to win the semifinals 1-0.

Collins, head coach of the Fraser Valley Rush, a Midget AAA team in British Columbia, has placed great emphasis on choosing players with self-compassion who have the ability to not let go of mistakes.

“We wanted really hard working girls who are mentally capable of showing a lot of self-compassion,” Collins said. “At the end of the day, it’s a game of mistakes. How do you react after making a mistake? We were looking for athletes who wanted to learn and wouldn’t judge too much the mistakes that happened during the game.”

This approach inspired her team to create an exciting style of hockey built on speed and creativity, which resulted in the province winning its first women’s hockey medal at the Canada Games since 1991.

In the weeks following the Games, MacLeod had time to reflect on the importance of having three head coaches monopolize the podium. She says a moment like this can have an impact.

“I hope that in 10 to 15 years the players we work with today will want to coach this team if we do our job right. »

All three medal-winning head coaches credit Hockey Canada with giving them the belief that they could be successful coaches and offering them a variety of opportunities in the process.

“It helps us as coaches, indeed as people in the world,” Marin said. “I think Hockey Canada is doing a great job. »

According to MacLeod, this support is particularly helpful in helping women in their early years as coaches.

“Throughout my career I’ve been blessed with great mentorship from all kinds of people and I think emphasizing that encourages people to keep going and I hope young coaches face adversity early in their careers, they do will be able to deal with it and grow from it. »

Hockey Canada is passionate about creating more opportunities for women through the Women in Coach certification events. This initiative aims to provide women with the resources, mentorship and network they need to thrive. The program also aims to remove barriers that prevent women from entering the coaching profession.

Anyone interested in attending or hosting a women’s coaching class may contact their Hockey Canada member’s coaching manager.