Daily Inspiration: Meet Katie Clark

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Clark.

Hi Katie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
We started Rocky Mountain FHC in January of 2023 to provide players with more opportunities to play field hockey in Colorado and to help grow the sport in the area. But Emily and I’s relationship goes back to the fall of 2012 when we met on our official recruiting visits to UMass Amherst to play field hockey (Katie from Vienna, VA and Emily from Highlands Ranch, CO). After college, Katie (me) made her way out to enjoy the Colorado lifestyle. We both ended up coaching for a local club team for a year or 2 and then the opportunity came up to take over a group of existing players under rocky mountain FHC. We were lucky enough to win a grant from the NFHCA along with a mentor to help us establish a foundation to be able to grow the sport in Colorado.

The existing group of girls, had all plan planning to attend a recruiting showcase tournament in Florida in January of 2023 (Winter Escape), but had no team to play with. Katie made the decision within 2 weeks of the tournament to get the team together, travel down to Florida and give it a go. We decided this tournament would be our test run, and it’s all history from there

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Haha! No, it’s been quite the adventure. Usually our out of town tournaments make for some great stories — standing in rental car lines until the wee hours of the morning, very early games after super late nights of travel, many hours on the road in the rental cars, and more. But these are all minor inconveniences looking back.

Some of the challenges have come around educating players and parents on the game of field hockey and letting them know that there are opportunities to play in college. I think not having a college team playing in the area can make it hard for players in Colorado to see what they can work toward, (so if DU or CU want to get a team – we would love that!!). So really education of the sport is the hardest challenge.

We now offer middle school programming to help grow the game with the little kids to educate on the sport earlier.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Outside of running RMFHC, I work in sales for a telecom lifecycle management company, zLinq, based out of Rino. I’ve been here since February 2024. Balancing the work load of tech sales and running a business can be challenging at times but I have a great business partner and friend in Emily and a great team at work.

At zLinq, I typically work with banks, credit unions and financial services teams to simplify their telecom setup. Telecom providers charge all kinds of different prices and change rates leaving people not actually knowing what they are paying for and our work feels like I’m giving back in a way and making IT team’s lives easier. There’s honestly no other business model like zLinq in in the market.

I’m most proud of being around a great team and great leaders in the office. I get to learn from some of the best in our leadership team and have even taken some of the things I see our CEO, Tatiana Finkelsteyn doing and try to implement that within our business of Rocky Mountain FHC.

How do you define success?
I would define success as not giving up. I’m never going to get it right or perfect on the first try but continuing to try (and also looking back on how far I’ve come). One of my favorite quotes that relates to this is “a smooth sea never made a skillful sailor”.

Pricing:

• (See our website for more details on programming)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rockymtnfhc.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaclark23/

Image Credits
Rocky Mountain FHC