Carmen Pekkarinen (b. 1972) was born and educated in Canada and calls Northern Ontario home. She has roots in Finland and made the country her new home in 1998, settling in Espoo in 2001. She only started learning Finnish as an adult and considers it a life-long project.

Carmen has always been involved in organized sport of some kind, playing ringette, slo-pitch baseball and speed skating in Canada. It took her a long time to be brave enough to join a sports club and followed her daughter down the ringette path, starting with Espoon Kiekkoseura in 2013. Over the years, Carmen has been a trainer (huoltaja), assistant coach and head coach of various junior ringette and girls’ hockey teams over the years. She is also a referee in the southern Finland region.

Social media is how she found out about Blind Hockey. Having already dabbled in the world of para ice hockey (where she still has plenty of contacts), blind hockey in Finland was a new sport in need of coaches. Antti Latikka and Markus Tihumäki recruited Carmen to Aisti Sport to be the Head Coach of Blind Hockey, where she has been since the fall of 2021.

When she’s not wearing her “day job hat,” at Trimble Finland you can find Carmen at the ice hall somewhere in the capital region either coaching or refereeing. She is the head coach of two ringette teams for Kiekko-Espoo and for Blind Hockey at Aisti Sport, the only multi-sports club in Finland for visually impaired and blind athletes. She believes the future of Blind Hockey is bright and looks forward to driving the sport forward in Finland and in Europe.