Kiely Barnett, left, started coaching with her dad at age 10.
Now 17, she took on her first head coaching position
this season. (Courtesy Debbie Barnett)"A 17-year-old girl is coaching my son?"
Kiely Barnett of Newmarket, Ont., is used to that reaction.
Parents may not say it to her, but it's written all over many of their faces when Barnett says she'll be behind the bench for the mini-tyke Timbits team this season. Head coach of the team. In fact, Barnett's dad is her assistant.
"At first, some of the parents were a little shocked, if that's the word, to see I was the coach," says Barnett, a Grade 12 student who's known around the rinks as Coach Kiely.
"But since we started practices, I've gotten a lot of great feedback. They realized when I got on the ice that I knew what I was doing."
Barnett's hockey background speaks to that. She's been skating since age 2, and now plays competitive women's hockey with the Intermediate AA Aurora Panthers, where her skills have earned the interest of U.S. colleges who are scouting her for their teams next season.
Her coaching career began at age 10, when she started helping her dad with her younger brother Owen's house league team. Three years later, Barnett was assisting Owen's rep team, even when her dad wasn't head coach.
This year her efforts are focused on the four- and five-year-olds on her Timbit Newmarket Hockey club as she takes on her first stint in the head coaching position.
The season is six weeks old and she's already made an impression.
"The convener of the league actually tells other coaches to watch her on the ice," says Neil Bellinger, whose son Seth, 4, is on Barnett's team. "She's that good."
Mini-tyke convener Shaun Quinn says Barnett runs "a really tight practice."
"I told some of the inexperienced coaches to watch her, and probably some of them will follow her example and learn from her, even though they're not 17," he adds, laughing.
Quinn cites Barnett's enthusiasm and ability to connect with the kids as some of the assets she brings to the league.
"It's not only a flavour of teaching the kids, but also being able to talk to them about her own experience, to tell them why a drill is important, and just come at it a little differently than it would be if their dad was telling them," he said. "She's a great addition to the league."
And she's hard to miss out there. Barnett is the only female coach, and she's more than a decade younger than her coaching counterparts.
Her motives for taking on the role are simple. When Barnett started coaching at age 10, "I was helping so I could be on the ice as much as possible, and I really like kids," she says. It means she now gives up what's left of her weekends -- the hours not taken up by her own hockey, which sees her on the ice four or five times a week -- to coach others.
"It great just to see them having fun out there, because I mean, that's what I do when I play hockey," she says. "To watch these young kids have fun and fall in love with the game I love, it's awesome."
Her team of eight players practices for an hour on Saturdays and Sundays. Once they get the fundamentals down, the scrimmages and games will start.
"We're just kind of getting them on their feet now," Barnett says. "I focus a lot on skating, because that's where it all starts. For most of them, it's their first time on the ice."
According to Bellinger, his son Seth and the rest of the team have come a long way already.
"When Seth first started he could just basically walk. Now he can skate; he's even skating backwards. These kids on this team, the improvement in them all is staggering."
He's not surprised, though. It was Bellinger who encouraged Barnett to coach his youngest son after watching her work as an assistant with her father's team years ago. His older son played on that team.
"She amazed me then, and she's grown into a tremendous coach," he says. "She's very good with the kids. She takes very good care of them on the ice, off the ice.
"On the ice, if a kid is struggling, she really gives them the extra time, which is great to see as a parent. It's really very impressive."
The parents who were "skeptical at first" when they heard who the coach was have come around, Bellinger says.
"I said, 'Trust me, you'll be glad to have her.' And now they all love her. I've talked to a couple of the other parents on other teams and they've said they wish they could have Kiely as a coach."
She's earned recognition for her efforts, not that she'll mention it unless you ask. Earlier this year, Barnett received the President award from Newmarket Minor Hockey for her volunteer work with the organization. She was also nominated for an Ontario Junior Citizen Award in 2008 for various volunteer work.
"It's great to be recognized for what I do," she says, though Barnett adds that's not why she does it.
"I love helping the kids learn out on the ice, helping them enjoy the game, so it's something they'll continue to do for the rest of their lives."
Our Game learned of Kiely Barnett's contribution to minor hockey through one of you. If you have a story idea, send a note to OurGame@cbc.ca
