At the Top of her Game

Amy Walsh sets strong agenda in new role as Executive Director of Hockey Nova Scotia

Amy Walsh (’99) has played hockey at the club, varsity and professional level, and right now she’s at the top of her game.

A former captain of the Acadia varsity Axewomen and Academic All-Canadian who played semi-pro for a year in Switzerland after her university career concluded, Walsh is now Executive Director of Hockey Nova Scotia. Her goal is to grow the sport in the province and have an impact at every level. Since taking the position in November 2018, Walsh has met with Minor Hockey Association representatives and volunteers throughout Nova Scotia, gathering information and working to chart a course that will attract young people to the game and sustain it in the future.

“I am listening and learning,” she says, “exploring more opportunities for kids to experience the game in a safe and quality environment. A priority of mine is to make hockey more accessible and representative of our diverse population. I want to find out from the grassroots what our challenges and opportunities are and ensure that our coaches are educated, trained and well supported.”

The value of training and education comes naturally to this Kinesiology honours graduate, who says her time as a student-athlete at Acadia was transformative. Walsh’s experiences in the classroom and the arena provided leadership opportunities that inform her perspective today, and the social connections she made are just as strong now as then.

Reflecting on her time in Wolfville, Walsh says she had a protective ‘bubble’ around her as part of a close-knit and comfortable community that included friends like Shannon (Mahar) Brown (’99), Leah Rimmer (’99), Christine Pound (’00), Stacie (Drew) Rimmer (’99), Gillian (Lynch) Lirette (‘98), Anne (Dennison) Cullihall (‘99) and professors Gary Ness, Wendy Bedingfield and Jim MacLeod. “It’s important to have that supportive network,” she adds, “and this is truly what I had at Acadia.”

Not surprisingly, she stays in touch with many of them. Walsh, who has three boys aged seven, nine and 11 with her husband Casey, met Shannon Brown in her first class at Acadia. Twenty years later, Brown has three boys also and lives one street away from Walsh in Halifax. Walsh still sends a Christmas card to Ness each year and holds him in such high regard that she has trouble calling him ‘Gary’ and prefers instead ‘Dr. Ness’.

Life skills

“I would definitely put my Acadia experience in three buckets,” Walsh says. “There was the student/schoolwork part of it, and I had a phenomenal experience. The social part was amazing, and then there was the hockey piece of it. I definitely learned a lot at Acadia, living away from home (being originally from Rothesay, NB and later Guelph, ON), learning time management, training and gaining confidence in my decision-making ability.”

She worked for a while as a pharmaceutical sales rep and later coached high school, university and minor hockey, which connected her to the sport once again. After a 10-year stint at Sport Nova Scotia, where she was Director of Sport Development, Walsh was thrilled with the opportunity to return to her first love and extol the virtues of hockey as a sport and educational tool.

“Hockey is all about life skills: competing, overcoming adversity, building on failure. Sports gave me my greatest strengths and I strongly believe that we need sport now more than ever,” she says. “If we can make hockey accessible and have a safe and positive environment with a focus on good coaching and a good player experience, nothing beats it. We want to encourage diversity and development over winning and make sure that kids have fun.”

She is a powerful advocate of women’s hockey and is delighted that Halifax will host the IIHF Women’s World Championships in April 2020. “It’s obviously a tremendous opportunity on the legacy front,” she says. “See her, be her. We hosted a similar event in 2004 and saw a spike in enrolment, and we are hoping to be even more strategic next year.”

Although Walsh admits she has a big job ahead of her, she sees great things on the horizon and is thankful for an engaged membership and a volunteer cohort that is, in her opinion, second to none. “We have the most dedicated volunteer membership, at all age levels” she says, and concludes that hockey builds communities and future leaders. “Collaboration and the alignment of clubs across the province with Hockey Nova Scotia and stakeholders is very important and will help make the future of hockey bright.”

Add to that the fact that it’s one heck of a game and you have a recipe for success that Walsh believes will sustain and preserve its legacy for generations.

Acadia Reminiscence

Amy Walsh spent the summer of 1998 in Wolfville working on her honours thesis, doing fitness assessments in the community and hanging out with close friends. She and her thesis advisor, Dr. Gary Ness, also spent a lot of time in his garage that summer developing an off-ice skating simulation device (trademark: SkateSim) that was eventually patented, used by the Toronto Maple Leafs and taken to market later on. “It was a great summer,” Amy says. “I was spending quality time in Wolfville, and the fact that Dr. Ness took me on as his honours student was incredible. I was passionate, I worked hard – he taught me a lot and gave me a lot of confidence.”