(Release courtesy Dara Currie, DiscoverWeyburn.com)
A familiar face will be hitting the ice in Italy this Olympic season. Alex Clarke, self-described ice hockey official, mom, full-time relationship manager in agricultural banking, farmer, and farmer’s wife, will be at the Olympics representing Canada as part of the IIHF crew.
“I’m an official representing Canada, but we are there with the International Ice Hockey Federation,” she said. “We’re not there with the team. As part of that, we don’t have the same resources that Team Canada would have. We figure all of our own stuff out, whether it’s accommodations, travel, all of that, we’re kind of planning ourselves.”
She noted, however, that this isn’t that different from her regular games.
“For the different leagues that I work with, you’re coordinating all your own travel, finding your own meals, and you don’t have an equipment manager. You’re kind of just showing up on your own and meeting the people you work with and skating in a hockey game.”
While many throughout Western Canada have seen Alex on the ice, she notes that there is a lot more to her that people don’t see.
“I think people don’t realize that I’m not just Alex Clarke, the hockey official,” she said. “I work a full-time job. We balance kids and a farm on top of it.”
She noted that last year she shifted jobs to allow her the opportunity to be all these things.
“I took that position because it 100% remote. It allows me the flexibility to work while I’m traveling and just balance things a little bit better to be able to accommodate both hockey and an income.”
She noted that she may seem to always have a lot on the go, but the priority is always her family.
“The kids in the family always come first, but you navigate that a little differently depending on the commitments,” she said. “The kids have seen me do a lot of things, and they’ve spent a lot of time away from me, and that alone time has been really good for them because they’ve developed relationships with other people that they probably wouldn’t have developed if I were home all the time. But they’ve also seen me do really cool things, and they’ve been a part of some of those really cool things. So I think they’ve been exposed to different things and different dreams and seeing mom chase a dream that’s not just her job, not just the farm, not just being a mom, has been cool for them too.”
One of those dreams Alex has been chasing is the Olympic dream. That dream technically came true during the Beijing Olympics, but, as Alex noted, it wasn’t quite complete.
“Beijing was kind of at the tail end of COVID, so we were bubbled while we were there,” she said. “We got to do absolutely nothing. We went from the hotel to the arena to the hotel to the arena, and we were confined in those areas, so we could not physically leave those areas and do anything else. We couldn’t go to a merchandise store. We couldn’t go to the Olympic village. There was no Olympic experience. So that was a part of the drive to go back to this Olympics, I want that Olympic experience.”
She added that this go round, she plans to take in different events and experience Italy while she is there, especially since many of the events are spread out throughout the country.
Alex also noted that there has been a lot of training that has happened to get to this moment.
“Hockey has been my life all of my life, but on the officiating side, it’s been my life for the last 10 years. I’ve skated from 80 to 120 games every season for the last 10 years. And there’s lots of off-ice training that goes into that. Last season, I was out of province for just under a hundred days, but then I skated 50 games in province on top of that.”
She adds that she has had to scale back a few other things she enjoys in preparation for the Olympics and plans to scale back a little bit next year.
“I’m not going to stop hockey, but hopefully balance things a little bit better, scale back and be able to do more.”
