Upper Arlington hockey coach Hamish Baird steps down after strong three-season run
After guiding the Upper Arlington hockey team to the state tournament in two of his three seasons as coach, Hamish Baird stepped down Friday so he could more closely follow his daughter’s playing career.
Baird’s daughter, Sophie, is in sixth grade at Jones Middle School in UA. She plans to try out for a travel hockey team this year, and Baird may assist in coaching the team.
"My daughter has been playing organized hockey for three years and a 12-and-under girls travel team has formed and she would like to play for them, and they play between 40 and 60 games a year,” Baird said. “I’d like to spend more time with my daughter and my family. I could potentially become one of the coaches for the travel team should she make the team.”
Baird, a 1989 UA graduate and former player in the program, spent three seasons as an assistant before being promoted to head coach in 2020. He led the Golden Bears to a 76-36-3 record, reaching state in his first two seasons and winning the Blue Jackets Cup in the 2020-21 season.
“I’m going to miss the relationships,” Baird said. “We had a lot of success on the ice and that was obviously a lot of fun, but the thing that I cherish most are the relationships that I built along the way with not just the other coaches and some of the parents, but really the players. I’m still close with quite a few players who have left the program.”
UA went 23-13-1 this past season, losing to eventual state champion Olentangy Liberty 10-1 in the district final.
Olentangy Liberty: Patriots capture central Ohio's first OHSAA hockey championship
The Bears have finished with a top-10 ranking in the state the last four seasons.
“Coach Baird had an incredible impact on our ice hockey program, both on and off the ice,” athletic director Spencer Smith said. “His passion for the game, his ability to connect with our student-athletes and his ... investment in UA ice hockey culture have all taken our program to new heights.”
Baird, 52, is the president of Columbus-based Remington-Davis Clinical Research. He succeeded Brett Howden as UA coach in May 2020 and also was an assistant under David Clarkson, a former Blue Jackets player, in the 2017-18 season.
“I do love it and I know I’m going to miss it, but I’ve left the program in great shape,” Baird said. “I have an enormous amount of confidence in the people who are coming behind me, and that helped me make the decision, knowing what a strong group of coaches that we have.”
Baird said he will always cherish his experience behind the bench for UA.
“I wouldn’t change anything,” he said. “ It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I’m extremely grateful that I was given this opportunity. It was one of the most well-run athletic programs I’ve ever been associated with.
“Spencer did an amazing job supporting me. He gave me everything I asked for. The parent board took away so much of the administrative burden from us, so we could focus on the players and the program. I had assistant coaches whose resumes made me look like an amateur. I can’t say enough how lucky I was to be put in this situation to work with these professionals and learn from them.”
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Hamish Baird steps down as Upper Arlington hockey coach
