Sean Goldsworthy has been head coach of the St. Olaf men’s hockey team for 19 years.
Last Updated on Thursday, 26 February 2015 10:17
By Kevin Hartzell
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
I was lucky enough to get out and watch a bunch of hockey again this past week. Being home with no coaching duties has allowed me to sample a lot of hockey. And I find just about everything I see to be intriguing. I see players with confidence and players without. Teams who play well together, and teams that are not so good. It is a difficult game in so many ways and the skills needed to play a complete game are varied with few players possessing them all. It takes a unique blend of talent and a good coach to put it all together to be successful.
Which brings me to my intrigue of the week: the MIAC. It is a league where the players are good, but few of the players expect to make money playing the game after college. It is a league where the players are often at least equally interested in their education – actually most are rightfully more interested in their education.
What I like most about the league is their coaches. It is a league where the leadership and direction of the coaches matches the goals of the players and the universities. Not every player sets out on a course to play in the MIAC, but those that are lucky enough to end up there will be happy to be led by a great group of coaches.
The coaches are a collective group of men who any of us would be fortunate to have our son’s mentored by. I know some of them well – Brett Peterson at Gustavus, Doug Schueller at St. Johns, Jeff Boeser at St. Thomas and Cory Laylin at Hamline. I am happy to consider them all friends. I don’t know St. Mary’s Bill Moore or St. Olaf’s Sean Goldsworthy quite as well, but they are good mainstays in the league as well. As good of hockey people as all these coaches are, they are even better men.
I attended one of the St. Thomas-St. Johns games this past weekend. I took a moment to ask both head coaches who they thought to be the most underrated coaches in this coach-rich league. Boeser told me he thought, “Bill Moore at St. Mary’s just seems to work so hard and continually come up with greatly competitive teams … you can only respect the work he does.” Moore hired Ben Kinne to help him and that has been a good move as well.
Schueller threw his vote for most underrated MIAC coach to Concordia’s Chris Howe. Chris did work on the Johnnies staff for a while, so Doug might admit a little favoritism, but nevertheless, one can only respect the job Howe continues to at Concordia.
It is the quality of the men who coach in the MIAC that most impresses me. I want to congratulate the MIAC colleges and universities on finding leaders of men who match their missions of producing quality people that are going to go out in the professional world and make a positive impact.
The MIAC had another highly competitive season with some pretty good teams not making the playoffs. With another great regular season in the books, we can all feel good about what is happening in the MIAC. It is a strong and highly competitive league truly dedicated to the betterment of its participants.
Kevin Hartzell was most recently the head coach of Lillehammer in Norway’s GET-Ligaen. A St. Paul native and forward for the University of Minnesota from 1978-82, Hartzell coached in the USHL from 1983-89 with the St. Paul Vulcans and from 2005-12 with the Sioux Falls Stampede. His columns have appeared in Let’s Play Hockey since the late 1980s. His new book “Leading From the Ice” is now available at amazon.com.
