Olympian enjoys giving back
Hockey player Marie-Philip Poulin helping girls with their own dreams
The juxtaposition wasn’t lost on Marie-Philip Poulin as she watched beach volleyball from Copacabana Beach on the TV set in the foyer of Pearkes Arena.
It was during the lunch break of the Future Stars girls’ ice hockey clinic for Island youngsters. At the height of the Summer Olympics, Poulin brought a touch of the Winter Games to Saanich.
If your mind is summer-sport addled at the moment and you need a Winter Olympics refresher, Poulin is the player who scored the winning goals for Canada against the U.S. in the gold-medal finals at both Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014.
“Seeing the smile on these girls’ faces is the best feeling of all for me,” said Poulin.
“And then I get to go back to my hotel room and watch the Summer Olympics. What can be better than that?”
For Poulin, it was the perfect day.
“Giving back is the most important thing to me, to be honest,” she said.
“To be a role model to these kids is awesome. Maybe I see a lot of future Olympians. I just want them to smile and enjoy this moment.”
It was a bright group that made up the Future Stars camp, one of three including Campbell River earlier on the Island and Kamloops later in the week.
“The kids asked me such intelligent questions, such as: ‘What is my greatest fear and what was my biggest disappointment?’ ” added Poulin. “They made me think a lot.” Even if women’s hockey is slow to grow in the rest of the world — the Winter Olympics and world championships are still basically a two-nation show between Canada and the U.S. — it has made decent inroads in this country.
“I had to play on boys’ teams until I was 15 because there were no girls’ teams,” said the 25-year-old Poulin, of growing up in Beauceville, Que.
Ian Fleetwood, director of female hockey for Saanich Minor Hockey, said his association now has 60 female players registered for the upcoming season, including his daughter Lauren Fleetwood, who took part in Tuesday’s camp.
“Now I can tell these players to have a dream and to be passionate about hockey,” said Poulin. They do and they are. The players at the camp Tuesday were from around the region. They were learning from the cream of women’s hockey.
“[Poulin] is the best player in the world right now,” said Ian Fleetwood. That made for happy campers. “It’s fun and I’m learning a lot,” said Desirae Anderson from the Juan de Fuca Grizzlies organization.
“Marie-Philip is a really good coach and amazing hockey player. I would like to go to the Olympics someday just like her.”
That was a common refrain among the young players in the sold-out camp at Pearkes Arena.
“I saw [Poulin] on TV in the Olympics . . . it’s amazing to think she scored two game-winning goals in gold-medal games,” said Lexi Johnston of the Peninsula Eagles.
“My goal is to be just like that and score goals in the Olympic Games.”
That’s what youth sport is all about: Having the ability to dream, said Poulin.
She will go for the Winter Olympics golden hat-trick in 2018 at Pyeongchang, South Korea.
But it can get serious, and tainted, at the top end. By now the storyline is familiar about the Russian doping program at the 2012 London Summer and 2014 Sochi Winter Games. “That’s not cool,” said Poulin. “Sport should be about pushing your body to its limits cleanly. Unfortunately, some [turned to] drugs. We want clean sports.”
This was the second year for the Future Stars girls’ hockey camp at Pearkes. Last year’s instructor was three-time Olympic gold-medallist Gillian Apps. There will be another camp next August, organizers confirmed.