Women's Hockey
When Surrey, B.C. native Sienna Cooke decided to try her hand at hockey at the age of 11, she couldn’t have foreseen that it would take her to the other side of the country just six years later to become the AUS rookie of the year for the Saint Mary’s Huskies.
According to Cooke, her relatively late start to hockey was due to her mother’s concerns. “I had always wanted to pursue the sport,” she said. “But being my mother’s ‘bubble-wrap child’, she sheltered me and tried to keep me away from the sport for as long as possible.” But the energetic goalie would have no troubles making up for lost time.
“Despite my late start and initial ice follies, I put in a lot of extra training and my skill level increased exponentially each year,” she said. “I started to think that maybe I had some potential when, at age 14, I was able to start playing summer hockey with my dad’s men’s team.”
Cooke played for the Surrey Female Minor Hockey League for five years, but still had yet to make a rep team. It was at the age of 15 that she decided to make the transition to boys’ hockey, opting to play with the Cloverdale Minor Hockey Association for her second year of Midget.
“A lot of girls start out in boys’ hockey and switch over to a girls’ league as they get older,” she said. “I did the opposite, and it was a tremendous experience and confidence booster for me.”
The year she made the transition, she played as a spare on a rep team where she was playing with men who were up to 20 years old and twice her size. “It was a much faster and more aggressive game than anything I had experienced prior to that, and it served me well,” she said.
As her final year of minor hockey approached, Cooke said she realized that if she wanted to fulfill her dream of playing university hockey, she would need to try out and hopefully play for a top level girls’ team where she would be seen by scouts. She managed to make the Vancouver Fusion Female Major Midget team, which was the highest level of girls’ hockey available for her age bracket.
When the time came, Cooke sent out recruiting packages and received offers back from about a dozen schools across Canada and the United States.
“After considering my options and speaking with coaches, SMU seemed to be the best fit for me,” she said. “I love the small community feel at school. Everyone knows each other, the athletics department is superb and I really like the smaller class sizes. SMU was definitely the best choice for me and my hockey career.”
“We aim to recruit great people, not just good hockey players,” said Saint Mary’s women’s hockey head coach Chris Larade. “Sienna truly lives the ‘do the right thing, all the time’ approach that we try to instill in all the girls. She is a very bright young lady and an academic all-Canadian. She works hard both on and off the ice and she possesses a great team-first attitude.”
In the 2012-13 season, her first with the Huskies, Cooke led the conference in saves with 506. Her .934 save percentage was the third highest in the AUS. She was named both an AUS first team all-star and to the AUS all-rookie team, and she took home AUS rookie of the year honours.
Coach Larade sees an even brighter future ahead for Cooke. “If she has one or two more seasons like she just had, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her get a U22 national development team camp invite,” he said. “She loves the game so much that there’s not much that can stop her.”
“It took a long time for me to realize and accept that people thought I was doing okay, but each goal still kills me,” admitted Cooke. “I will always be thankful to Coach Larade for taking a leap of faith and signing me to play for SMU.”
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Getting to know Sienna Cooke…
Do you have an early memory of learning to love hockey?
“My most vivid early memory would be my hockey team picture day. Just before we were about to step on the ice for our photos, the Major Midget Female team came off. I was in complete awe of how big, strong and talented they all seemed. It was then that I looked to my dad and told him that I was going to be just like them, that I was going to work hard to make a AAA team and someday go to university on a hockey scholarship. At that time it seemed like a long shot as I made Bambi on ice look talented.”
What is one thing you think your friends and teammates might not know about you?
“Although it had not initially been my intent to play goal when I started hockey, it was probably inevitable as there is a tradition of goalies in my family tree. My mother, grandmother, grandfather and great grandmother all played goal back in their day. My grandfather was even drafted to the NHL as a goalie.”
Coach Larade’s favourite memory of Sienna:
“Cooke quite possibly had the best metabolism I’ve ever witnessed, which somewhat concerned me when we had our first team pre-game meal last year before her first start on the road. She can eat and eat, often joking about it too. They say all goalies are a little different so I guess that’s her little quirk. If she keeps playing like she has, we’ll keep feeding her whatever she wants.”
Follow Sienna on Twitter @siennanicole