Hockey excellence helps position student for career of her choosing
There’s a unique pressure in being a goalie. In a single game, hockey or any other, the responsibility for the outcome can often land solely on their shoulders, whether fending off a breakaway or powerplay or, depending on the defense, how fast shots-on-net pile up.
Kaitlyn Slator (Medical Radiologic Technology ’21, Personal Fitness Trainer ’19) has found that the best way to respond to that pressure is, in a way, to ignore it.
“I've been a goalie forever,” says the NAIT Ooks women’s netminder. “I'm pretty calm and don't let things get to me. You live and you learn – and once you have been playing for a while, you realize that you can't control everything.
“I mean, you can always do your best. [But] goals are going to get past you all the time. That's a big part of the game.”
The truth is, however, that’s not a big part of her game, as far as goals go. On Jan. 13, Slator made her name in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) as the record-holder for all-time wins, at 47. In the same game, she tied the career shutout record for the league at 12.
This is on top of setting past records for most saves, wins and games played in a single season.
While one might be tempted to chalk up Slator's recent achievements to sheer longevity, given that she's in her fifth and final year as an Ook, “it’s more than that,” says head coach Brendan Jensen (Bachelor of Business Administration ’19, Management ’17).
What Slator has achieved, he says, is “mind boggling.”
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Strength in numbers
As a former men’s Ooks goalie (2015-17 and 2018-20), Jensen knows what Slator faces between the posts. “Anything over a 90% save percentage and two or two-and-a-half goals against is considered outstanding,” he says.
At the time of writing, Slator’s career save percentage and goals against were 92.3% and 1.76.
For Jensen, who’s coached the team since 2021-22, consistency ranks high among the reasons for the 23-year-old’s success. That applies to not just her on-ice performance but her locker-room demeanour, too.
The way she arrives to every practice, he says, “you would never know … whether it was the best day [for her] or the worst. She goes right to work.”
Slator’s ability to keep her cool plays a role in that. But an even stronger contributor is how she feels about the game.
“I love every second of it,” she says.
Slator has played hockey since she was a five-year-old in her hometown of Brandon, MN, settling into the role of goalie just a few years later. By her mid-teens, she was backstopping elite-level teams in girls’ leagues – “which I'm thankful for,” says Slator. “I think that's what also helped build my love for the game, that you get 20 best friends every season.”
She’s mindful of thanking her latest squad of best friends, not to mention Jensen, for helping her make her mark in college sports.
“I feel like I peaked later in my hockey career, to be honest,” says Slator. “Once I got to NAIT, that's where I felt like my game [reached] the next level.”
“The sky’s the limit”
Could she go even higher?
Jensen has seen ACAC players such as Slator carry on to professional leagues. Her stats, for example, are in line with those of the top five goalies in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, a six-team organization featuring some of the world’s best players.
“The sky’s the limit,” says Jensen. “She’ll have the choice probably at the end of this year.”
While Slator knows hockey will always be a part of her life, she’s not yet sure what she wants that role to be.
When she was scouted by Western Canadian schools to play after high school, she chose NAIT for two reasons. One: the quality of the facilities. Two: she felt that a polytechnic education was the straightest and surest path to a meaningful career.
Indeed, she’s already working as an X-ray technologist at Edmonton hospitals and clinics, and supplementing those skills with her current studies in Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
“I couldn't ask for a better job,” says Slator. “I love going to work.”
While she’s content to wait and see what the future will bring – including the ACAC playoffs, in which her team has already secured a spot – she’s grateful for what hockey has done for her so far. She sees the skills she’s developed during her record-breaking performances as an Ook as being widely applicable.
Hockey helped teach Slator how to manage the demands life places on one’s time. It showed her the value of collaboration and communication. It proved to her that hard work pays off.
Most importantly, Slator feels, hockey helped her become independent. In 2018, she arrived in Edmonton without much sense of her future, or how to take care of herself so that she might make something of it. Today, she’s at the outset of a career, in health care or hockey or a mix of both, that she may shape as she likes. Experience and confidence have positioned her to let as few goals past as possible.
“Hockey has made me 100% the person I am today,” says Slator. “I don’t know who I'd be without it.”