Cowgirl comes full circle

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/11/2020 (2025 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Growing up in the small Manitoba village of Holland, all Tammy Mahon ever wanted was to be a cowgirl.

Mahon, who turned 40 on Wednesday, is currently living her dream as she lives on a cattle ranch outside of Dauphin with her husband Terry, daughter Lexi, 5, and son Bodie, 3.

But Mahon had to be patient to get to where she is today — a run as one of the best Canadian volleyball players of all time got in the way.

Not that she’s complaining, though.

Mahon was recognized this week for her standout five-year run with the University of Manitoba Bisons team between 1998-2003 as she was inducted into the Canada West Hall of Fame. Mahon led the Herd to four national medals in five years, capped off with back-to-back Canadian titles in 2001 and 2002.

Mahon, an outside hitter, was the national championship tournament MVP in 2002 and was named the Bisons’ female athlete of the year the following season. Mahon is one of 23 inductees in the 2020-21 Hall of Fame class. Since late September, the HOF has been revealing a new induction weekly.

“It’s really humbling… Any time a team athlete receives these awards, I think we can all agree it’s a tip of the hat to all of your teammates, your coaches and the people who encouraged and supported you all around,” said Mahon in a phone interview.

“I came to the U of M a very raw volleyball player and halfway through my second year, my coach (Ken Bentley) had groomed me into becoming a good volleyball player, and as the years progressed I got better and better.”

Mahon didn’t stop improving after she graduated. She went on to play for a decade with the Canadian national team and had a nine-year professional career with stops in Sweden, the Netherlands, Romania, Azerbaijan, Greece, Germany and Indonesia before retiring in 2013.

She was named captain of the national team in 2008 and made 173 appearances with Team Canada. She represented the red and white at the 2010 world championships and the 2012 Olympic qualification tournament.

“It is crazy to sit back and think about it all. The old cliché ‘time flies’ is so true… I can’t say I grew up thinking I wanted to be an Olympian. I wanted to be a cowgirl. I wanted to barrel race and be a veterinarian because I was a farm girl. But as my sporting career went on, I just fell so in love with sport and all that it offered to me,” said Mahon.

She was a multi-sport athlete in high school at Treherne Collegiate, where she broke the provincial high jump record. She was named the Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association female athlete of the half century in 2012.

“It was a no-brainer to keep going and keep pushing and keep pushing and making opportunities for myself. It’s very wild to think (about).”

She spent years travelling the world and playing against the best the game had to offer, but Mahon always figured her story would come full circle.

She met Terry through a former Bisons teammate, Dauphin native Kathy Preston. In 2012, Mahon moved to Terry’s cattle ranch, which is in a remote area between Ste. Rose du Lac and Winnipegosis, and the couple got married two years later.

“I don’t think it’s surprising to a lot of people who knew me when I was younger,” she said.

“They would probably say this is a really great fit for me. Maybe some people who met me in Europe when I was playing professional volleyball would say ‘What? You ended up on a cattle ranch? How is that possible?’ But anybody who knew me pre-travelling the world with volleyball is like ‘Yup, that’s exactly where she should be.’”

Even though she is living more than a two-hour drive from Holland, the village hasn’t forgotten about their hometown hero. The community painted a mural of Mahon on the side of the local skating rink.

Back in Mahon’s Team Canada days, when the squad was based out of Winnipeg, she’d often bring teammates to her family farm for the weekend to give them a taste of small-town Manitoba.

“There are a lot of things we learn and use in sport that can apply to everyday life or anything that you want to do. If anybody can look at that mural and think ‘Boy, if she did it, I can too,’ that’d be great. I’d love that… I was never the biggest or the best player. I was pretty small for being an outside hitter on the international stage,” said the 5-10 Mahon. “If I can inspire anybody to follow their dreams, sport related or not, that’d be lovely.”

Today her life is consumed with caring for cattle, and her children of course, but volleyball still remains a big part of who she is. For the past five summers, Mahon has run volleyball camps in Dauphin, which is a big highlight for her.

“It’s sort of an empowering feeling for me because I stepped away from the sport and I moved back to the farm and I had kids, so all of this motherhood and rancher’s wife, you’re not always successful every single day,” she said.

“You don’t always do everything right. But I get on the volleyball court and I hold the ball and that gives me a feeling of power, knowledge and it’s something I know very well and something I feel very passionate about still to this day.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31