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Sharon Creelman

Through the 80’s and 90’s, Sharon Creelman made a name for herself as one of Canada’s best-ever players. She has now moved into the coaching arena, and in May she will face her biggest challenge yet. She is head coach of the Canadian Junior Women’s team competing in the Junior World Cup in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The team will gather in Waterloo, Ontario, for a mini camp from May 1st - 5th and leave for South America on May 6th.

Creelman talked with PlanetFieldHockey’s Andrew Griffiths about tournament prospects...


AG: How do you feel the team is prepared for the Junior World Cup? Have you been able to do the preparation you wanted to?
SC: The lack of preparation for this team heading to Argentina is an issue. The kids have worked hard on their own, but there is no substitute for international calibre games. The team played 5 matches in Cuba in December. This was the first time the team had been together since the qualifier in Barbados. A lack of funding does not allow for a tour prior to going to Buenos Aires in May. Ideally, I would like to have taken the team away last summer to Europe to expose them to another standard and calibre of hockey. It would have been my hope to take this group away for 2-3 weeks in April as a final build-up to the Junior World Cup. We are arriving in Buenos Aires a week in advance and will play practice matches against India and Wales in that time.

AG: What are your goals for the tournament?
SC: Based on the results of the qualifiers we are going into tournament ranked somewhere around 14th. Rather than talking about how we would finish, this team has focused on why we decided to go forward with the program when we learned four years ago there would be no funding from FHC. It was very important to this group of young players to go to the Junior World Cup, to represent Canada at the international level, even though they would have to pay their own way. They understand they are there to gain international experience. One of the goals of this tournament is to evaluate the athletes and their ability to compete at the international level.

AG: What are the strengths of your team?
SC: This is a team that has good speed and athleticism. While they are not experienced internationally, the group as a whole has played a high calibre of hockey in their university and provincial programs. We have good depth, and will be able to make lineup changes to improve our play.

AG: You have a tough pool with England, Korea and Russia. What do you think of the draw?
SC: There are no easy pools thats for sure. I expect both Korea and England to be top 6 teams. Any time we can play teams of that calibre it gives our kids another important playing opportunity. Russia is a little bit of an unknown. It will be important to do a good job scouting them before we see them on the 18th.

AG: How will you approach these games, or the pool matches in general?
SC: I expect Korea and England to be very balanced in their play, they are traditionally very strong attacking teams that like to open it up and play an up tempo game. I'm not sure it will be in our best interest to try and match that style of play. We have to be very sound defensively and be disciplined with the ball. The confidence level of our kids will dictate their ability to possess the ball and create good scoring opportunities. I'm not sure exactly what to expect from Russia, although they have always had great athletes that can handle the ball. One of my jobs will be to keep the kids focused on what needs to done one game at a time. It's a gruelling start to the tournament schedule with 3 games in 4 days. To be successful, it will be important to be able to go deep into the bench to keep players on the field fresh.

AG: Having played in Argentina before, what do you expect the environment to be like?
SC: It will be a fantastic environment. The people of Argentina are passionate and knowledgeable hockey fans who love to watch their team. The atmosphere at this event will make this experience one the athletes will never forget.

AG: Anything else you want to say about the team?
SC: I really like the makeup of this team. It was an extremely difficult team to select, but I feel confident in the team we have chosen. It is a more athletic team than the one that was at the Junior World Cup in Korea in '97. I feel that many of these young players will go on to play at the senior level in the future.

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