HIL’s lone woman coach, Emily Calderon, breaking through barriers in men’s hockey

HIL’s lone woman coach, Emily Calderon, breaking through barriers in men’s hockey

With the shadows looming large on the pitch from the evening sun at the Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium, Hyderabad Toofans is going through its paces before a key Hockey India League (HIL) clash against Tamil Nadu Dragons. At one end, head coach Pasha Gademan is running through the finishing drills with a set of players, while at the other end, his assistant coach Emily Calderon, with her arms tucked behind her, is overseeing another batch.

They are simulating attack vs defence scenarios inside the circle, and Emily is busy giving feedback with each play. With a hockey stick in hand, she shows “one, two touch and shoot! No one, two, three touches” to the team’s youngest forward, Irengbam Rohit Singh, as he listens intently.

For a long time, Emily has been recognised as one of the most successful analysts in the game. She joined the Belgium men’s team in 2015 as the assistant performance analyst. During her time, the Red Lions have completed hockey’s grand slam: winning the World Cup, the European Championship, and the Olympic gold in a four-year cycle.

But it’s not easy to spot the Belgian during international matches. She is always posted in the tower, behind the goal, analysing plays in her role as the senior performance analyst with the Belgium national team, earning a promotion in 2018. She has also moved up the ranks – from an analyst to an assistant coach – at the Belgium first-division club Waterloo Ducks.

So when Gademan approached her to join him at the Toofans, she was clear about being on the sidelines and the bench in an assistant coaching role to add to her work with analysis. “That was, for me, the next step. I wanted to make it to the bench, like I am with my club team, where I’m really the assistant and sit on the bench during the game, because that’s where you can feel and have an impact during the game,” Emily, who is the only woman among the coaching staff in the ongoing men’s HIL, tells Sportstar.

Emily’s journey suggests she was adopted into hockey rather than born into it. Emily, of Chilean descent, says her introduction to hockey didn’t come from home but from her neighbour’s. Her parents, who run a restaurant in Edegem, used to leave their six-month-old daughter over the weekends with a family nearby who managed a hockey club. And with countless hours spent on the turf over the years, her passion for the game was stoked.

“The whole family played hockey. They would be at the club on Saturday from eight to eight at night. I would be there the whole day,” she recalls.

Emily had a moderately successful hockey career before she hung up her playing boots at the young age of 23 for the tactics board, a facet of the game she had begun preparing for from the age of 15 with her hometown team, Victory Hockey Club. “Almost every kid in Belgium who plays in the first team for their club would be asked if they would like to give training to the younger kids. I first started by coaching an Under-10 team. And by the age of 19, I was responsible for coaching the whole youth line from U-6 to U-12,” she says.

She began her professional coaching career at Dragon’s Hockey Club in 2012, coaching the U-14 and U-16 teams. She adds, “At the same time because everything is a little bit mixed in Belgium, I started coaching provincial teams first. And then I moved on to the national team before moving to Waterloo Ducks with the men’s senior team.”

When she got an opportunity to work for the Belgium U-21 women’s team, she reunited with an up-and-coming coach Shane McLeod, who had coached her during her teens. She did video analysis for McLeod at the U-21 European Championship in 2015 and the U-21 World Cup in 2016. The pair struck up a partnership that proved fruitful for the next decade, where the two won the Belgium Hockey League title before moving to the Belgium senior men’s national team and winning the hat-trick of international titles together.

Her natural progression through the system and her work at Waterloo Ducks kept her in good standing when she joined the Red Devils. “I never felt out of place because, at that time, there were four players (John-John Domen, Vincent Vanasch, Gauthier Boccard, Simon Gougnard) from Waterloo, who were also the leaders of the national team. My relationship with Shane is also one of trust, and he’s always given me the platform to represent myself. So, I think I’ve always had the right platform. And then, from my side, I also never expected them to treat me differently,” she says.

Emily was credited for Belgium’s improvement in penalty corners and penalty shootouts, which often make the difference in high-pressure international tournaments. “Penalty corners and shootouts are where I have the biggest database in the world. Every game that has been played internationally, I have seen it. I have analysed it, know what happened, and can share that information. I think I calculated it; it’s about 150 games a year internationally,” she states.

Every little attention to detail can make a difference at the highest level. So before the Tokyo Olympics, Emily took it upon herself to pour through each game twice. “So we ensured that I also analysed all the individual clips for all the opponents. I would watch a game one time; then, I would watch it again to analyse the individual players as well. So, every game, two times. It’s not possible to do it the whole time. So we chose to do that the year before the Olympics,” she reveals.

Her efforts were vindicated when Belgium swept home the prizes, and Emily also earned the appreciation of the veteran skipper and goalkeeper Vanasch. Emily’s tireless gathering of data played its part in Vanasch showcasing his incredible talent.

“What we do with penalty corners and shootouts is that we really go into detail there. I was lucky to work with somebody like Vanasch, who is the world’s best goalkeeper. He takes the time to go into the details. We worked very closely together, ensuring that he had everything as detailed as possible so he could go through it and get the needed details,” she adds.

Being the only woman in a male-dominated sporting arena has its challenges. Emily hopes for change but is cautious, adding, “But it’s not an easy lifestyle. You’re away from home a lot. I also understand that the male staff always says, ‘Yeah, it is possible to combine a job with a family.’ It is [possible], but that’s not how I would like to do it. If I had children, I wouldn’t be a month-and-a-half in India doing the HIL, so that’s a choice I make, and a lot of other women who have families also do. I understand that this is not a life they want. I think it is possible if you want to because the men do it. But I also understand that a lot of women don’t want that lifestyle if they have children.”

After stepping up as an assistant coach in recent years, the 35-year-old is eager to step into the head coach’s shoes if called upon. And she wouldn’t mind being the one to break the glass ceiling for women in men’s hockey.

“It is possible. If I get an opportunity, I think I could do it. I think I have the qualities and the knowledge, and I think the players would respect me. There is no doubt about that. The only question then is if I want it in that moment. But it is not a must. I’m not in this sport to break barriers. I’m here to do what I like to do. It should not be the driver of my decision. I want to do it because nobody else has done it before. That’s how I thought about it five, six years ago. But I have to do it because I want to do it and because it would make me happy. That should be the only reason,” she says.