Having started playing hockey at age seven, more than a year later than she wanted, Sarah Howald Hodges skated for the love of the game. It got her to college and through a fantastic four years. But she knew that there wasn't much opportunity for women to continue to professional sport. Despite that, she knew there was a place for her. Find out how seeing things from both sides can make you appreciate where you are.
Guest Sarah Howald Hughes, Dartmouth ’96, started playing hockey at age seven, at least a year after she wanted to. She was told girls couldn’t play in the league that young. When she was eligible she kept playing—with the boys—until going off to high school for junior and senior year, setting her sights on playing at the college level. Hockey got her to Dartmouth, which she ended up loving, despite the long hard hours of training, practicing and competing as a two-sport athlete. Though a formidable javelin thrower, she shone on the ice. As a college sporting career studded with Ivy League championships and All-Ivy recognition came to a close, she didn’t want her time in a rink to end. Instead of pursuing continued playing opportunities, however, she wanted to be a coach.
The problem was, a starting coaching job was going to pay little more than a volunteer role. So she opted to go back to school for an education degree, which would put her on a more secure path toward a teaching job with a coaching assignment. When she finished the degree, though, and was offered the teaching job in a small town in Saskatchewan, she was also offered—on the same day—another chance at a University coaching position. Having turned the dream down once, she wasn’t about to turn it down twice, even with the salary disparity. More than two decades later, she has built her program and lived the dream.
In this episode, find out from Sarah how seeing things from both sides can make you appreciate where you are…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Sarah Howald Hodges has been the head coach for the University of Regina Cougars women's hockey program in Saskatchewan for more than two decades. She has also coached for the Canadian National's U18 and U22 teams in addition to leading other development efforts for the sport. In her playing days at Dartmouth, she was on two Ivy League Championship teams, was named first team All-Ivy, and was one of the co-captains our senior year. She led her team in points for two of the four seasons, and is still among the top-ten leaders in career goals in the program's history. She also threw a mean javelin. She lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, with her husband and two hockey-playing daughters.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Sarah Hodges: As a player you can go out and get the job done. As a coach, you're just kind of, you do the work every day in practice so hope you've done everything that you can to prepare them so they can do what they need to do on Friday and Saturday. So I liked the teaching. I liked the development. Women's hockey is still a young sport, so I like to have an impact in our community that way.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Having started playing hockey at age seven, later than she wanted, Sarah Howald Hodges skated for the love of the game. It got her to college and through a fantastic four years. But she knew that there wasn't much opportunity for women to continue to professional sport. Despite that, she knew there was a place for her. Find out how seeing things from both sides can make you appreciate where you are...on today's Roads Taken, with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
So I'm here today with Sarah Howald Hodges, and we are going to talk about drive and passion and what that looks like from different angles. So welcome to the show.
SH: Thank you very much for having me.
All right, Sarah. I ask the same questions of everyone who comes on and they are, when we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
SH: Okay. So when I, when we were in college, I would say I was living the dream, that I was loving every aspect of being able to be a student athlete.
I was on the hockey team and the track and field team. So I spent a lot of my time training and competing and that was my first love. And I loved every second of it at Dartmouth. Had great coaches and great teammates. Athletically I was living the dream. I'd say academically, I was just getting by, to be honest. I was definitely an athlete first and I found myself surrounded by a bunch of brilliant people and I just kinda, yeah, I was hanging on and trying to get through.
And when we left college, I thought I would become a teacher and a coach. I really wanted to be a coach, but at the time there weren’t a lot of full-time jobs as a coach. And I just didn't really think it was realistic. So I left Dartmouth and I came to Regina and I did my bachelor of education so I could become a teacher in Canada. And that was my path at the time. But the end goal was always to become a coach.
LJR: Is that home, like your hometown?
SH: It's not. I grew up in Kincardine Ontario, but I went to high school in Saskatchewan. I went to Notre Dame College in Wilcox, Saskatchewan for my last two years of high school. And that's where I was recruited from. So I went back to the college and I worked in the dorms while I was doing my BA at the university.
LJR: Got it. So you came to Dartmouth as a hockey player, athlete, all of that because how many years had you been skating?
SH: I started playing hockey when I was seven. I actually wanted to play earlier, but I wasn't at the time I wasn't allowed to, which seems really bizarre now because I, I don't feel like we're that old that we should have not been denied those opportunities as kids. But I registered when I was six. I wasn't allowed to play. And then I started playing hockey with boys at seven and then played boys hockey up until I went to Notre Dame in grade 11.
LJR: So were you playing boys' hockey because there wasn't a girls team or there wasn't a girls team of the caliber that you needed at that time?
SH: There were no girls teams at that time in our area anyway, Kingcardine’s a pretty small town and we're in a rural area. So it was either play boys or go figure skate or something else.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. And I've talked to a lot of student athletes. You know, loved it and had that drive and—I'm foreshadowing here—Many of them did not continue on and many of those reasons have to do with the physicality of it and that how hard it is. So how did you go from at least a two-season or three-season sport athlete to one who didn't, wasn't bruised, battered, and you know, beyond repair at graduation?
SH: Well, You know, I, I think I probably was a little bit bruised and battered, but it definitely was my passion. And that was, that's why I ended up at Dartmouth. I liked—to be completely honest—I loved the school and I, but the reason that I went there was because I was recruited to play hockey and do track and field. And, you know, as a girl growing up in our time, I don't, there weren't a ton of opportunities to do that.
And my thought was, I've got four years and then I'm done because there's nowhere to go from here really, as a, and that's still a little bit the case as a female athlete in some of the, you know, hockey would be still a bit of a fringe sport, but there's not a lot after college. So my thoughts were I had to go hard and do the full four years and then I guess we'll be done.
So there was never, ever any thoughts of quitting, no matter how beat up for or hard it was. And it was, it was difficult. Like I did hockey, we didn't train as much as, as kids would train now. But track, I would go from hockey practice to lever, own to lift with the track team. So I was putting in some pretty solid hours, right from day one.
LJR: Amazing. And I mean, that was a great time for our hockey program, too, when we were there. And I remember for some reason you were on a team of Sarah's; weren't there like a billion Sarah's playing hockey at that time?
SH: There were, I think there were seven.
LJR: I don't know why that was just burned into my brain because it's so funny that I even said to my husband, I actually don't know how many players you start with you know, play on the ice at the time. But most of them were Sarahs.
SH: Yeah, we, I think we've probably had 18 or 17 then. Yeah. So we were 50, almost 50%.
LJR: Very fun. Well, you are a Sarah that made a name for herself and, okay, as you said, there weren't that many opportunities…still to this day, there aren't that many opportunities for women in kind of professional sport, but you had this love, this drive. So talk me through your thought process of what's next and how that kind of morphed into this.
SH: Yeah, just when I was finishing my degree at Dartmouth, my coach was helping me. I was, he knew that I wanted to coach and he was kind of helping me go in that direction and pushing me there. And I remember getting, you know, two phone calls in the same day. One was a college that was looking for, it was more or less a volunteer assistant coach that might, that our coach at Dartmouth had kind of made the connection for me. And it was paying. Like maybe $5,000 a year. And at the same time I got a call from Notre Dame, the high school that I went to and they had offered that I could work in the dorms while I was going to school at the University of Regina and I, you know, I had to make a bit of a snap decision. And in that was one that I actually didn't choose coaching.
I thought it always being probably practical and, and responsible and thought maybe the $5,000 may not lead to something better down the road. So I better have that education degree where I could teach and have some flexibility and still coach. So that was the first step. And then I got involved in coaching right away at the high school level.
So I had the outlet and I was able to play a little bit at that time too, which was a lot of fun. It was senior hockey. It's not very good, but it was something to fill the void. And then when I was finished, The education degree, the University of Regina has started a program in it. And again, it was, you know, two phone calls in the same day, coincidentally, again. This time it was the University of Regina offering the head coaching position. It was paying $4,500 a year. And the other one was a full-time teaching job in small town Saskatchewan and paid a whole lot more. And I was like, I couldn't see myself in small town Saskatchewan for the rest of my life. And I was like, I'll take the $4,500 job and do my best. And if it works out, it, maybe it'll lead to other things or maybe I'll end up with a full-time job. And it, it ended up being a full-time job within two years, which was amazing.
LJR: Yeah. And at least a little bit more than the 5,000 other starting salary, so…
SH: Exactly. Yeah.
LJR: Okay. Okay. And actually that's where you've been, right? You stuck with that program for all of those years? How many years has it been?
SH: It's going to be 23 this season.
LJR: Oh my gosh. And when you're a coach and you're, we're young, still at the beginning of that, you were doing the senior skating. When did you kind of make that mental shift from I'm a player to now the playing days are over and the “now it's a different kind of life at the rink.”
SH: It was, I mean, I continued to play for me. Two or three more years competitively while I was coaching. And when I say competitively, it was the odd, like we had a national tournament in Canada where we'd throw a team together and go to that. So I wouldn't say it was a year-long competitive process, but a couple of weekends here and there. So I had, because it was so sporadic, I was able to actually, you know, be both and have some separation in my life, I guess, between the, the player and the coach. But I'd say after I stopped that it was probably three or four years in there, you know, I really made the shift in yeah, I know it was, you know, some, I knew I wanted to do it when I was at Dartmouth, but I think once I started it, it was like, yeah, this is this is it. Like, I loved it right from the very start. I probably, I was young. I was only 23. When I started looking back, I probably didn't have a sniff of what I was actually doing, but I was enthusiastic and very confident. And just coming out of the experience at Dartmouth, I think I was trained pretty well, but, you know, I know that I've learned a lot since those early days, so…but yeah, right from the start, I knew it was what I was wanting, what I wanted to do.
LJR: That's great because I can also imagine a scenario for someone who thinks, oh, the way to keep these glory days of my youth and my competitive thing going is I'll just shift to being a coach and what they really want is to be the competitor, right? And so I can also see a road where someone goes down and says, oh, I thought coaching would be the thing. And now it just feels less than. But you kind of knew with—and I think it fits well with the education degree—like you wanted to be the person that to help another generation or now maybe even two generations of skaters, right?
SH: Yeah. So, and it is a difficult transition for a lot of people. Like I think when you're a player and even sometimes you only find it with assistant coaches, like you don't really see what the head coach does in the background. There's a lot of work. The things that I still enjoy, but I mean, your, your wife up watching video half the night you're phoning 17-year-olds once a week, like all and you know, so there's things there that aren't a ton of fun that people don't see and they just think, oh coach, you must have the best life ever. You coach. And then you have your whole summer off, like most amazing. It's like, no, it's not like that at all. So yeah, there's a lot of people that would come into the job and think it was going to be one thing and find out very quickly that there's a lot to it. And there's a lot of things with coaching that really aren't, you know, the glamorous things that you maybe think they would be.
And then in terms of the competitiveness, it is difficult to make the transition because you just don't have the control like as a player you can go out and get the job done. As a coach, you're just kind of, you do the work every day in practice so hope you've done everything that you can to prepare them so they can do what they need to do on Friday and Saturday.
So yeah, it's definitely a difficult transition. And, but yeah, I liked the teaching. I liked the development and I like…You know, hockey women's hockey is still a young sport, so I like to help grow the game and then have an impact on our community that way.
LJR: Yeah. And Sarah, you kind of mentioned this a bit earlier that, you know, in our day you couldn't start as early, and I'm sure that you've seen the evolution, even though it's a young sport, the evolution over this 20-year period. What are the things that have remained the same about the sport that is great. And what is, what are the things that have changed that also has made it better?
SH: That's a really good question. I think, when you get right down to it, I think on the women's side, especially it's still girls and women playing for the love of the game. I think on the boys side, a lot of time there they're striving to be professional player. There's a lot of pressure and it can, you know, result in not the best things. I think there's more pressure and more expectations in women's hockey now. But I think when you get right down to it, you get a lot of players that just love to play and love to be with their teammates. And I think it's a little bit more pure in that regard.
Some things that have changed just the level overall is, you know, it's so different, and it's so good cause they are starting younger and they are really just doing hockey actually.
LJR: Do, do you see that? Do you have more single sport players?
SH: Yes and no. I think that's, you know, with youth hockey, that's what a lot of people do, but I've actually found that at our level, a lot of the kids that get to our level are multi-sport athletes or they were up until high school.
So I mean, I think it'd be very difficult to do more than one sport at the university level now, if not impossible. But yeah, they start earlier. There's so much more opportunity for training and there's more resources. So the actual level of plays way better. So that's, I think that's exciting and it gets better every year. Like there's no slow down, which is kind of…yeah.
LJR: And Sarah, yes, people think, oh, and you have your summers off and it's not exactly like that, but it does afford a bit of flexibility though. I guess, not on Fridays and Saturdays. So what is life kind of, how, how have you structured life around this all-encompassing, all-consuming athletics world?
SH: Also a good question. It's, you know, it's difficult to look back. Cause the last year I've been, you know, basically sitting on my couch, doing a lot of things over zoom or whatever. We were able to practice for a couple of months this past winter. But for the most part it's been out of distance.
The good thing like our athletic department is, does allow us to be pretty flexible so we can, you know, be flexible in our hours. There are times obviously that you have to be there, like practice time and in game time; there's no, there's no changing that. But it's definitely allowed for me to have, you know, I don't need to go into the office until I get my kids to school in the morning. And you know, the kids actually get quite a few perks just to get to watch games and things like that. And then the summer it's, there's definitely some downtime and that's the time that we kind of take some time as a family. [LJR: Yeah.] We don't get a lot of winter holidays, but that's all right.
LJR: How have you dealt with kids sports? Have you been like, okay, you can't do hockey cause all of those would be in the same timeframe that I'm really like tied down or is it you can't and help yourself and they're into hockey?
SH: I can't help myself. So they're, they're both in hockey. My husband is great. He has to do it all the driving and all that stuff through the winter. So that is, it's a good thing he's around because we'd have trouble otherwise. And then the downside is I don't get to see them a lot and don't get to coach them, but it is what it is.
I get to watch them play. They play softball in the summer and do some other things, so got opportunity to watch them another year.
LJR: And you're good at watching films. So you could probably get a film or two on then iPhone.
SH: Yes, it's actually, it's very, that's the difficult part is like, you want to coach and tell them what to do, but you just can't.
LJR: Nope. Yep. So when you look back at Sarah in college, it seems as though you're one of the, almost few, I would say, that I've talked to that said this is who I thought I would become and who you are now. That Sarah, is there a surprise of your life that you didn't think through all the way then? Or are you just like, yeah, this is exactly what I thought it was going to be like?
SH: I think the surprise is that I'm in Regina, Saskatchewan for 23 years. I never, in a million years, thought I would be with the same program and have the opportunity to build a program from scratch, which was really cool. And it's, it is something that I'm very proud of. But yeah, I, I never would have thought for a second that I'd be in the same place for as long as I have been.
And there might be some more surprises in the future. I don't know, keep the doors open. And 23 years is a long time to coach at this level. So I'm not sure what the future's gonna hold, but I, you know, I hope that I can continue to be involved in the sport. And I really, I am passionate about women in coaching and developing coaching. So I hope when I'm done with my coaching career, that I can go on and influence and mentor other coaches.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad that you took the leap and said I don't know that I could be in that little small town because it sounds like the fit just is there and clearly the program values you and it's where you were supposed to have been for all this time, at least. So thanks so much for sharing your story with us.
SH: Well, thanks again for having me. It was a pleasure.
LJR: That was Sarah Hodges, who has been the head coach for the University of Regina Cougars women's hockey program in Saskatchewan for more than two decades. She has also coached for the Canadian National's U18 and U22 teams in addition to leading other development efforts for the sport. In her playing days at Dartmouth, she was on two Ivy League Championship teams, was named first team All-Ivy, and was one of the co-captains our senior year. She led her team in points for two of the four seasons, and is still among the top-ten leaders in career goals in the program's history. She also threw a mean javelin. Thanks again for listening to these stories of winding up just where you're supposed to be, and for joining me—Leslie Jennings Rowley—for more episodes of ROADS TAKEN.