Penticton hockey coach part of history | Sports

Penticton’s Cassea Schols helped make hockey history at this month’s International Ice Hockey Federation Women’s World Championship in Denmark.

Schols, 33, worked behind the bench as an assistant for Czechia (Czech Republic) which won its first medal in the history of the

tournament – a bronze.

In her third season as head coach of the Okanagan Hockey Academy Under-18 girl’s prep squad, she only met her new European team for the first time a month before the Worlds began in August.

“So myself and their (Czechia) new head coach Carla MacLeod (of Calgary) really only got to know the players from May to July through Zoom, emails and videos,” recalled Schols who is good friends with MacLeod, the two having worked and played together previously.

“In July, we got to go over there for a

10-day camp (in Litoměřice, Czechia) and came home for 10 days and then went back in August for the championships, so it was pretty quick.

“We knew we had our work cut out for us, but we thought the staff and team before us did a really great job to put us in the spot we were in.”

That included the Czechia women qualifying for the Olympics for the first time ever in Beijing 2022 where they finished seventh overall.

However, winning a medal at the world championship was an uphill battle for the underdogs who entered the tournament ranked seventh.

They first had to battle their way out of Group B (going undefeated) and then needed to knock off two Group A contenders, Sweden and fourth-ranked Switzerland in the medal game.

“Our mindset was to take every day and every game one at a time and the end goal was to put ourselves in a position we haven’t done before,” said Schols. “And then, when that final buzzer went it was like, holy moly that just happened. There was a lot of excitement obviously and a little bit of disbelief, but you could just see the pure joy on everyone’s face.

“Everybody who was there and was a part of it just really believed in what we were doing and it’s just super exciting and just an honour to be part of something that made history.”

Born and raised in Edmonton, she grew up playing hockey and eventually went on to play university hockey in Pennsylvania where she was a five-time All-College Hockey America all-star.

After her playing days ended, she went on to coach and eventually landed…