An ex-St. Albert hockey player has recently been selected to bring his nearly a decade of hockey experience to help coach the U18 U.S. national women’s hockey team.
35-year-old Brent Hill was recently picked to be an assistant coach on the U.S. national team, to build on top of his three year NCAA college career. Hill had his start in hockey playing minor hockey and taking power skating in his hometown of St. Albert.
“I always think back to my minor hockey days in St. Albert,” says Hill, a 1996 graduate of Paul Kane High School.
Hill played for St. Albert Minor Hockey from roughly 1984 to 1996, and most notably played for the St. Albert Saints before they were relocated to Stony Plain. While with the Saints, Hill and the team fought their way to be the 1997-98 Alberta Junior Hockey League champions.
When Hill still had a year of eligibility left, he decided to leave the hockey world in order to pursue what he thought was his adult life. He notes that he had a noticeable void in his life that work could not fill.
“I then had an epiphany … I still wanted to play hockey,” recalls Hill. “I gave up on it too soon. I’m a hockey player.”
Upon this realization, Hill called his friends and family to see what their thoughts were on his wanting to return to hockey.
“I expected [them] to talk me out of it … but everyone believed in me,” says Hill, who had then decided to pursue his dream of playing the game.
“I basically quit everything I was doing, and went to Boston with only six hundred dollars.”
Hill eventually found himself in Burlington, Vermont. While playing a game in community league hockey, Hill was scouted by the St. Michael’s College hockey coach, who then convinced him to play at the school. It was then that Hill started his three-year NCAA hockey-playing career in Colchester, Vermont.
During his college playing career, Hill instructed children’s minor hockey, and gave power skating lessons. Upon graduating in 2004, Hill signed on as a travelling coach for a boys’ rep hockey program, the Green Mountain Glades, and then eventually switched over to a girls’ rep program in 2006, the Vermont Stars.
In 2009, Hill connected with the USA National Hockey Camp as an intern coach, and quickly began instructing the power skating sessions at the camp. It was while at this camp, that Hill had started a conversation with a women’s hockey player over an Edmonton Oilers shirt that Hill was wearing – a conversation that resulted in Hill applying for an assistant coaching position at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which had an NCAA Division 1 women’s hockey team.
In the summer of 2013, a unique opportunity came to Hill, as he was offered a position at Merrimack College to help develop and implement an NCAA Division 1 women’s hockey program at the school – slated to start in the fall of 2015.
In conjunction with working at Merrimack College, it was announced on May 20 that Hill was selected as the assistant coach on the U18 Women’s National Team.
Hill says that he is excited to bring a support system to the team, and hopes to help not only with teaching the players on his team the fundamentals of the game, but also be a guide to them in team communication and in preparing them for the sometimes overwhelming experience of playing high-level hockey.
Despite his successful hockey player career, and blooming coaching career, Hill still pays tribute to his hometown, which provided the roots for his love and career in hockey.
“I never forget about St. Albert.”
