Switzerland to Spain: Courtney Kollman on seeing the world through hockey

It’s a great day for Hockey Friday! I’m Sally from The Ice Garden with this week’s edition where I chat with Courtney Kollman. The Calgary forward earned a bronze medal in the World Junior Championships for Canada in 2018, then played 146 collegiate games between NCAA and USports. After graduating with a Masters in Biomedical Technology, she spent the last two seasons playing in dramatically different European countries: Spain and Switzerland.

**Quotes have been edited for clarity

TIG: What got you into hockey when you first started

CK: I come from a hockey family, so I watched my cousins growing up, my dad played [NCAA], and my grandpa and my papa were both heavily involved in hockey. There’s actually a rink now in Calgary named after my grandpa and he used to be the president of the Calgary Canucks, which is the junior A team here. So I basically grew up at that rink running around as a little kid with my cousins. I’ve been playing since I was like four years old, so I guess it runs in the family a little bit … then on TV, where obviously we always watch the PWHL and NHL and all that, so lots of hockey watching in the family.

TIG: Not every league has the opportunities to travel on the weekends, it’s a common misconception. Would were you free on the weekends to travel [in the Spanish League]?

CK: Switzerland and Spain, it was a little bit different. Switzerland, they have like the international breaks like there is in North America when there’s the rivalry series, so we would be able to travel on those weekends. If you were on a national team, like a bunch of our teammates were on the Swiss national team, so like five of our players wouldn’t be there because they were going train with the national team, so we usually had those weekends to go off and travel. You’re so close to everything, like Italy, Lake Como was three hours from us, or Austria, Innsbruck was the same, like two and a half, three hours. I wouldn’t say every weekend you have off, obviously there’s lots of games, but the couple times they have international breaks we could travel on the weekends. I think Sweden is a little different than that. I don’t think they can travel that much, and that was part of the reason I wanted to go to Switzerland because I knew that.

TIG: So you had your year in Switzerland to do something traveling. Were you planning on going for a second year or did that fall in your lap? Walk us through year two a little bit.

CK: I kind of knew I wanted to travel a little bit more. I hadn’t seen everything that I wanted so I was looking at other options. I had traveled all around Switzerland, so I was like, “oh, let’s let’s look at a different country“, and one of my friends, Anna Meyer, was like, “I’m kind of looking at Spain, I want to go live in Spain,” and she was actually gonna go teach there. My friend’s friend was playing there, and I was like, I’ll reach out to her and see what she thinks and she ended up going back as well. But one of my best friends from high school, her best friend from university was playing there, so I knew her a little bit through like Facetime … They were roommates for four years in college, so I ended up talking to her and how she liked her experience and she said she loved it. So I reached out [to the organization] and they offered both of us a contract. So me and my friend went and played with her. So we had three Canadians on the team living together which was awesome!

TIG: For either country, did you have any big culture shock moments between the two when you first got there?
CK: I think they’re very different cultural wise. I think Spain, I guess comparing them, Switzerland is — they’re very active. The town I was living in, people are out hiking, skiing, mountain biking, on walks or cross-country skiing, like they had all this in the town, so very active. People enjoy going outdoors and not that people don’t enjoy it in Spain, but it’s a very laid-back lifestyle. Like it was crazy to me that they closed all the stores down at lunch for like three hours. Lunch is their big meal in Spain, so they would eat a huge lunch, have a nap, a siesta in Spain, of course, then they’d go back to work for a couple hours, then eat dinner at like nine or ten at night. I think that was like the biggest cultural thing — it’s very relaxed and chill, everybody’s enjoying each other’s company, families are going home for lunch, and you go out and see everybody sitting on a patio at lunch, having a beer — that kind of thing for three hours.

TIG: You were a champion! How was that? How was that win?

CK: It was pretty awesome! I mean, Spain is known for their partying. It was awesome to win at home…the rink was pretty full, the town really supports our team and the men’s team. There was a lot of people who came out to the game and everybody came out on the ice after. Then the town actually puts on a parade! The next day, which, we were out all night, and if you’ve ever been to Spain, you know the clubs are open until like six [AM], so we were out pretty late. Then, the next day the the club put on a parade for us. They have this thing called the Queen’s Cup, which we also won this year. It’s like a little tournament at the end of the year, but they put us on a parade after we won the weekend. That is like probably the most unsafe thing I have ever seen.

We were in the back of this hauling truck kind of thing, all of us with the trophy standing — like, I was still drunk. It was fun and we drove around the town and the town is actually on a hill. So we go around through the whole town, go down the hill at the bottom, where you come into town, and there’s a roundabout with a hockey statue. All the fans and families or whoever, follow in their cars behind the truck we were in. We go around the roundabout a couple times, get out and take pictures by this hockey statue down at the bottom and all the fans get out, so that was fun. Then, they brought us up to the town hall and went up into the town hall on the balcony and everybody on the team said something.

TIG: Now getting retrospective, tell me something things you’ve learned about yourself or something you’ll hold onto for the rest of our life from playing abroad.

CK: Maybe not something I’ve learned but something I’ll hold on to is being in Spain. They created the best community for us. I met so many people and they really made the experience special. I think it’s obviously a little bit different in Spain than Switzerland. Like, I wasn’t getting paid the salary I was in Switzerland, but I loved my experience in Spain just because of the community and the people within the club, and a family that I actually worked for. I watched a little boy over over the lunch hour, because they have such a long lunch hour, I would pick him up from school and take him back back to his house and play with him. He didn’t speak a lot of English, but I taught him some and we would play hockey in the basement, we would play soccer, and they were just like the most special family ever.

They made me feel like I had a family there, as well as the people within the club, our GM and coaches and stuff. So it was pretty awesome to be a part of a community. Maybe what I learned from that is just always surround yourself with people who make you feel like you’re at a second home or at home. It was a pretty special town, and it’s a small town, so they all know each other, and it’s, it’s a huge community there, and they all rally around each other which is something I felt very different from Switzerland. It was not the same in Switzerland. It was more like everybody’s kind of by themselves

TIG: Awesome! What are you looking for next year, what’s your plan?

CK: I’ve actually looked at going to play in Australia, which I think would be another awesome life experience and being able to travel around there. I’m looking to go with one of my friends who I played in Switzerland and in the States with. We’re kind of looking to go together and have another experience together before we get into the real world of working, but that is one option for me. If not, I think I’d go back to Spain and go back to the same team that I was playing on because I loved it so much. I’m very torn between the two of them, because it’s either a new life experience that would be so cool, or going back to somewhere that was like my second home, so I don’t know yet, but I also put my name in the PWHL draft.

Kollman has visited 26 countries and is looking to add more to her list while she continues playing hockey!

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Soccer: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer
Tennis: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer
Basketball: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The IX Sports
Softball: Maren Angus-Coombs, @Maren-Angus, The IX Sports
Golf: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX Sports
Hockey: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden
Gymnastics: Jessica Taylor Price, @jesstaylorprice, Freelance Writer