Ringette community helps champion coach recover from family tragedy

By Emma Zhao

When Emily Price’s family was down, her ringette family lifted them up.

Shortly after 2 a.m. on Dec. 16, 2022, Price found out that her husband Adam had been in a serious accident while on the job plowing snow. He’d been taken to hospital with severe, life-threatening head trauma.

“You know, when the police come to your door and say that your husband is probably not going to make it, it’s not a great feeling,” recalls the mother of two boys. “You kind of just have to push through.”

Even now, Price still struggles to come to terms with what happened.

But what started out as a dim prognosis for Adam improved little by little at first, and then in bigger bounds. Within two months, he’d been released from the Ottawa Hospital Rehabilitation Centre and was back at home.

And during that time, the Price family gained a new appreciation for the community they’re a part of, which includes members of Nepean Ravens ringette, where she’d been coaching the under-19 ‘AA’ team.

A GoFundMe page raised over $30,000 to help the family, and there were innumerable gestures behind the scenes to help out as well, highlights Price, who felt incredibly touched by the outpouring of support they received.

“It was just members of the association that I don’t even really interact with sometimes just reaching out, or families that I used to coach years ago offering everything that they could,” she recounts. “It was really just a great community that came together when our family was struggling.”

Mothers of fellow ringette players offered to look after her children, and the Nepean association lightened her workload and provided help for babysitting and other childcare services during the hard time. Nepean ringette also organized a few coaches to take over her duties with the U19 team so she could spend more time with her family.

Price says that she wouldn’t have been able to get through that period had it not been for the caring support she received.

Now over a year since the accident, Price is back behind the bench, and her new Ravens U14 ‘AA’ team made this season especially memorable by recently winning the Ontario championship.

Read More: Ontario-champion West Ottawa & Nepean ready to roll for ringette nationals

Charlotte McIntyre, a defender on Price’s champion squad, says that her coach is one of the best in the business. Not only does Price possess the technical knowledge to be a good coach, she also has tremendous empathic qualities, which she admires.

“She equals out fun and focus,” explains McIntyre. “She’s amazing, like, if we ever need to talk to her, she’s always there for us and she just helps us so much.”

Price, who’s been impressed by the relentless work ethic of her players this season, says she’ll be forever grateful for the way everyone stepped up for her family in difficult times.

“I live in a community, and I’m part of communities that were able to build me up and help me through it,” she underlines. “I didn’t go through it on my own … and there were so many people behind me.”