Women’s Hockey News

Cait Stiles' life has always had something to do with hockey.  She started playing the sport at 8 years old, becoming a goaltender at age 11. 
 
"I played locally in Windsor with the Sun Parlour Female Hockey Association and Windsor Wildcats, where I played at the travel AA level from Peewee all the way through to the Intermediate level," Stiles said. 

"From a young age I had an amazing goalie coach (current Windsor Lancers goaltending coach Perry Wilson). He taught me so much about the position, and I was always becoming a better goalie because of him."
 
Wilson's coaching influence rubbed off on Stiles. She began  helping her younger sister's team by mentoring the goalies, offering advice and guidance to them when she attended her sister's practices. 

That interest to coach and become a trainer then later brought Stiles to the University of Windsor women's hockey team where she first expressed her interest in coaching to her best friend and now Lancer women's hockey coaching colleague, Candice Chevailer, the team's strength and conditioning coach.

Three years later she became an assistant coach with the blue and gold while also still working in her initial team equipment manager role. Fast forward to the present day and now Stiles is proudly partaking in the U SPORTS Female Apprenticeship Program which was launched in 2019 to increase the number of females in coaching positions across Canadian universities. It has allowed Stiles the opportunity of a lifetime to grow her coaching leadership skills and craft new expertise.  Stiles also is glad that she gets to do it alongside her original first coaching mentor Wilson and an experienced bench boss in Lancer head coach, Deanna Iwanicka

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