Glendale resident a 'billet mom' to two Predators goalies

Being a long-time hockey mom herself, Glendale resident Shari Gidney knows how lonely it can feel for a young athlete to leave home to play the game in another city. 

So when Gidney’s daughter, Stephanie Isherwood, left home to take a firefighter’s position in Northern Canada, Gidney decided to help out the Greater Metro Junior A Hockey League’s (GMHL) Niagara Predators by offering to billet goaltenders Zane Clausen and Georgii Kodzaev. 

“I’ve done this before,” she tells The Local. “My son Nicholas (Gidney) played for the Thorold Blackhawks in 2017-2018 and we took in one of his teammates, Spencer Blackwell (from Erin, Ontario). It worked out really well, so I decided to give it a try again.”

She adds that Nicholas had a great billet family himself when he played for the Miramichi Timberwolves in New Brunswick in 2020-2021.

With Nicholas now studying and playing hockey at Portage College in Lac La Biche, Alberta, Gidney, who calls herself a natural caregiver, decided the time was right to help out once again. 

Originally Gidney planned to take in only North Dakota native Clausen, but after speaking to Predators’ owner and president Robert Turnbull, she realized she had the space to take in Kodzaev, who arrived from Russia, as well. 

“It’s been good so far,” Gidney says. “It’s pretty much like having your kids in the house. Because they are older (Clausen is 21, Kodzaev is 18) I’m not having to get them to the rink and back. Zane does that. And they help around the house, too. My kids didn’t always do that.”

Turnbull says billet families are expected to basically provide room and board, and wi-fi of course, for Predators players. Each player is supposed to have his own private room unless there is a request to share a room, as he has seen in the past. 

Only one other Predator, Russian forward Georgy Kholmovsky, is currently billeting. He is staying with Paula Aitken Puglisi.

“Billets are the backbone of our program,” says Turnbull. “We have numerous skilled players who want to come and play for our team. Sometimes we have to turn them down because we can’t find billets for them.”

In the past the Predators and other GMHL teams have opted to rent an apartment or home for a number of players to stay together unsupervised.

“That’s not ideal all the time,” he says. “A couple of times I did that and I had to have the place monitored regularly. It’s much better for them to live in a family home, where they become part of the family.”

In return for her efforts, the Predators pay Gidney $600 a month per player to cover food costs . She and her family are also provided with passes to all Predators home games in both the regular season and the playoffs. 

“I recommend you don’t take your players to Costco with you,” laughs Gidney. “I did that once and the bill was so high. I don’t cook for them every single day, because they are older, but I always cook for them on game days.”

“They’re very different in what they like,” adds the director of sales and marketing at Crystal Head Vodka. She points first to Kodzaev and then to Clausen. “He’s a sugarholic, and he drinks only water. They don’t eat as much as I expected, and neither one of them seems to gain a pound.”

Sitting in her living room the banter back and forth between the three is just like what you would expect from a family dynamic. The one thing they can’t agree on is the temperature in the house; Gidney likes it cool, and the boys like it a bit warmer. 

Gidney says both have been very helpful around the house. They have mowed her lawn, cleaned up the yard and taken out the garbage for her every week. The boys do their own laundry as well.

Clausen drove his Toyota SUV up from his North Dakota home, so he squires Kodzaev around back and forth to the gym at the NOTL Community Centre and to the arenas in Vigil. 

Kodzaev had a longer journey to get to Niagara, flying first from Russia to Dubai, then to Montreal and finally to Toronto. With his parents and older sister still back in his hometown of Vladikavkaz in the foothills of the Caucasus on the Terek River, he admits it helps to have a mother figure like Gidney helping him out. 

:”I know that if we all lived in a house together,” says Kodzaev of the alternative of sharing a house with his teammates, “the dishes would never be cleaned and the place would be a mess. I lived like that in Sochi when I was 16. I didn’t like that.”

“When he first got here I helped him out with a bunch of things,” Gidney says of Kodzaev. “We needed to open a bank account here, and he needed to get a new SIM card for his phone, and a couple of other important details.”

For Clausen, who billeted with fellow Predator Jaroslav Dohnal in Fort Erie when he came to play in Niagara late last season, Gidney’s Glendale location is much more convenient.

“I was so far away,” he laments. “It took me so long to get to the arena. I really didn’t get to do much with the team outside of the practices and games last year.”

Though they are both goalies, the pair say they don’t talk much about their position when they are together. They’ve had some board game nights and the team often heads to Bricks and Barley on Four Mile Creek Road following home games. 

Gidney has shown the boys a little bit of Niagara, as well. She introduced them to Hydro Hill as a great place to run, and also took them to use the track facility at Canada Games Park in Thorold. 

Over the holiday season in December, Clausen will drive back to North Dakota, while Kodzev will stay in Niagara at Gidney’s home. She plans to include the young goalie in any family activities that take place over the season, and even offered to celebrate Orthodox Christmas with the Russian native, who says he does not recognize that celebration. 

And of course there is no commitment for Gidney beyond the end of the GMHL season, which usually wraps up in April.

As an empty-nester, Gidney insists she gets a benefit from the billet situation as much as the boys do. 

“A bonus is that it’s so nice to get to know people,” says Gidney. “These are two really great kids. I think I have a big heart and I love to help out. I love to pay it forward.”