PHOTO: Martin Bazyl
Malinda Hapuarachchi is passionate about field hockey. During her years as a Varsity Blue she earned countless accolades, including the CIS Gail Wilson award as the country’s best all-around athlete. She was named OUA player of the year and team MVP. In acknowledgment of Parents in Sport Week, we sat down with the PhD candidate, mother and coach to get her perspective on the pivotal role that parents play in raising healthy, happy athletes.
At a time when so many media stories focus on the minority of poorly-behaved, obsessive hockey parents, Varsity Blues Assistant Coach Malinda Haparachchi’s no-drama take on parental involvement in her sport is refreshingly light. “Without the parents, there would be no field hockey,” she says, only half- joking. “But the field hockey community is so small. So there is a ton of parent involvement. Everyone is a volunteer! It’s like a family.” This intimate atmosphere means that even when parents are heavily involved in the game, they take more of an altruistic approach. “They aren’t there just to advocate for their own child, they are there to promote the sport and the growth of the sport because everything in field hockey is grassroots.”
Even at the university level, Hapuarachchi says the parents play a pivotal role in keeping the spirits up and the athletes energized. “Here at U of T the parents organize our tailgate parties and they bring the athletes their snacks after the games. It’s really sweet”
Hapuarachchi discovered her sport of choice in high school, which is later than many athletes of her calibre. Her parents immigrated to Canada from Sri Lanka and were never involved in high performance sport themselves. But they were nonetheless committed to seeing her excel. “They were my biggest fans. There were times my dad would drive me to Toronto from Ottawa on the weekend for practice. We would have these early morning practices and my dad would be up at six in the morning and he would sit there on the sidelines reading the newspaper. In university my parents would come out to watch us at the nationals. The field hockey community is really a family, a network.”
Today, Hapuarachchi is carrying on this tradition, introducing her daughter to field hockey the way that many find the game: total immersion from an early age. “When I got into high performance, I met a lot of people who got involved early on because of sisters or aunts or mothers. You see a lot of that.” Hapuarachchi’s two-year-old daughter Sanomee has been on the pitch since infancy.
“When I was on maternity leave with her, I was ready to go back to practices to help out when she was four or five months. If there were athletes who weren’t training or coming off on injury, they would hang out with her on the sidelines. So she was coming out to practices when she was so young and she had no idea really what was going on.” Today, Sanomee is an unofficial member of the team, often running around on the sidelines with her mini stick in hand and her little voice regularly heard exclaiming, “Go Blues go!” And while Hapuarachchi calls her the unofficial mascot of the team, she understands there may come a time when Sanomee puts down the stick and finds her own way to be active.
“At the end of the day, I just want her to be healthy and for physical activity to be part of her every day. And I want her to know that know that no matter what, she’ll always be a part of this very special family that is the field hockey community.”