New Boss On The Bench, Part 2

*This is Part 2 of a two-part feature on St. Thomas head coach Bethany Brausen. This part focuses on Brausen’s take over of the program and the challenges that she faces*

New Boss On The Bench, Part 1

University of St. Thomas women’s hockey head coach Bethany Brausen went through a big and unexpected change last November after then-coach Joel Johnson’s surprising resignation. Brausen then became the interim head coach, and she said that her immediate focus was on the players, not on her new promotion.

“I think in the immediate moment, our priority was just so high on making sure that every single day was such a great experience or the best experience we could be providing for our players,” Brausen said recently. “So, to be honest, I didn’t really think about it too much from a future job perspective. I think me and (assistant coaches) Marty (Sertich) and Alli (Berg) stepping into that role, we were so focused on the experience of the student athletes that we weren’t really thinking too much about the long-term at that moment. And I think a part of that, too, was the three of us, we really had a lot of autonomy in the first year because that was the Olympic year (2022), and coach Johnson was away quite a bit for the Olympics. So even during that year, I was the acting head coach and Marty and Alli took on some pretty heavy responsibilities that year, too.

“So, it wasn’t a completely foreign space for us to step into. It was something we are actually pretty comfortable with because we’ve already done it and we had done it in a year that you could argue was a lot more challenging with it being the first year of transitioning to Division I. One of our coaches at St. Thomas shared this with me during that transition window this year, but she said ‘keep what’s important, important,’ and that was Jen Trotter, our softball coach, and I just thought that was such great advice. Do things the right way with integrity one day at a time and keep what’s important, important, and to us, that has and always will be, the student athlete experience first and foremost.”

Weekend sweep is a weight lifted
After 12 games, including an exciting sweep of then-No. 4 Minnesota Duluth last month, the Tommies removed the interim tag and Brausen officially became the head coach, and she said that weekend against UMD was important to everyone in the program.

“It felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders, but more so for our players, I think,” she said. “We talked a lot about this as a coaching staff. They have been so deserving of that type of weekend. You can look from an outside perspective and just be like ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that happened,’ and internally within the locker room, I think all the collective group of 26 of us would say ‘I can, I can believe it happened’ because we’ve been there every single day along the way, and we’ve seen the effort that they’ve put in and the extra time and the skill sessions and the video. Just the way that they are committed to the full experience at St. Thomas on a daily basis.

“So for us, it’s not that it wasn’t something to just tremendously be celebrated, but I also think it’s something that they’ve really worked for and they’ve really earned. So, I think that little bit of weight off the shoulders really came for the players sake because they’ve really earned that, and they’ve been earning it for a long time, and they finally got rewarded in a win-loss column standpoint. It was a huge weekend for us, but what I love about our group is they’re just not satisfied with it at all. They feel like we’ve started to turn the corner, if we haven’t already started to arrive, and I think they feel like they have a lot left to prove and so they did that in the second game against Duluth and then they had a great weekend against St. Cloud (State) and we split with another close to top-10 team in the country, and I just think that we have a group that’s really resilient and really excited to keep pushing the needle of what it means to be St. Thomas hockey.”

When asked if her job has changed at all since the interim tag got removed, Brausen said it hasn’t changed much.

“I think that fundamentally at the foundation of who I am and who we are as a staff, nothing really changes for myself and Marty and Alli when it comes to how we’re gonna be as people,” Brausen said. “I think that hopefully remains true for any coach that is really kind of living into their own authenticity, is that at your core of who you are you continue to always do things in the right way and with integrity. I think that logistically, there’s definitely some different pieces now, right? Like whether that’s for myself or the two other members on our staff.

“Of course, there’s a lot more long-term planning now. We’re starting to say ‘Okay, now that this is the official transition here, those tags are removed, we can really move forward and proceed differently, knowing that we have that future really solidified in front of us.’ So, what does that look like from a recruiting standpoint? What does that look like from a full culture development as we project into the future? So, I think there’s the excitement now of just officially turning the page and really starting a new chapter in the program’s history.”

Coaches are constantly recruiting throughout the year and now that she’s officially been given the center spot on the Tommies bench, Brausen is really emphasizing the importance of connections between players and coaches.

“I think that, I mean from the best staff that I’ve seen, either working with staffs, or from a distance and learning from others, I think the biggest thing with recruiting is you do need to do it by committee,” she said. “I think that when athletes and families are signing up for going to a school, they’re signing up for your full staff because you know the head coach ultimately makes a lot of the decisions, and maybe does a lot of that administrative side of things, but they are in a eight-month process every single day with multiple people, and so to me, I think it’s really important, not only from a talent acquisition and evaluation standpoint, that we have multiple members on our staff seeing these different potential recruits and trying to recruit them in the future, but it’s also that relationship element.

“I think it’s really important that families are able to connect not just with me or just with Marty or just with Alli, but that they really know that we have a great group that can offer a lot of different things for these athletes in the future.”

Navigating the puzzle pieces of the portal
The transfer portal has been a blessing and a curse in college hockey, and Brausen says each year is going to be different for each program.

“It is absolutely a puzzle,” she said. “It is such a different day and age of athletics. I mean, compared to when I was an athlete at Minnesota in 2010 to 2014, it’s a completely different landscape now. I keep going back to the importance of academics and continuing to learn being a lifetime learner, I think the same is true professionally in the athletic space. You do really have to adjust and pivot and start to learn things like ‘What is the new normal in athletics?’ and ‘How do we keep adapting with those changes over time?’ I think the portal makes it really tricky, but I think the biggest thing is year-to-year, it’s a puzzle, and so every single year is going to look a little bit different. I think it really depends on your needs year-to-year.

“There might be a certain year where you’re like, ‘Gosh, we are dire to get a defenseman for the following fall. There might be other years where we’re like ‘You know, we’ve actually got a little bit of wiggle room. We might be able to absorb a couple players that really help overall build our program.’ So, while every year is different, I do think it’s important, like I said, that we keep adapting and changing and kind of being on our toes as coaches with the ultimate goal to give a incredible experience to our current student athletes, while knowing that you’re always in the hunt to build the best program you can possibly build.”

The portal has had a huge effect on men’s hockey as it seems to get updated every couple of hours as soon as the season ends, but Brausen says it’s affected women’s hockey as well.

“I think it’s had a pretty heavy impact,” she said. “I mean I look at sports that are really the extreme version of what the portal you know can do, and implications they can have like football, the basketballs (men and women). Those are really extreme cases, but those are also pretty widespread and massive sports, think about how many teams are playing and so I would say relative to women’s hockey, it certainly has had a tremendous effect. We just have less teams and less players compared to some of those other sports, and so I think one of the biggest areas is just the kind of the student athlete experience and my hopes, and my goals as a coach in the recruiting process is to help players get it right the first time.

“I think if families and these players in particular are signing up for experiences that really are tailored toward their ultimate goals and their holistic experience. What do academics look like? What is the social experience at this school? What is the hockey coaching staff? You really should be, hopefully, signing up for all of those factors and not solely just one or the other because no different than life, it’s challenging. It’s hard. There might be days where players are frustrated with their playing time and so you really do have to treat the portal as families, as not necessarily a back up option, but an opportunity that would be more in a unique situation. I would love for players to get it right the first time, and for coaches to honor those same opportunities on the other side of it as well.”

Tourney time next season?
At the time of this article, the Tommies had four regular season games left, three of which scheduled at home before entering the WCHA Playoffs where the season will come to an end. However, next season, both of the UST hockey teams will be eligible for the NCAA Tournament, and Brausen says that changes things quite a bit.

“I think it absolutely does,” she said. “Phil Esten, our athletic director, he’s been doing all the right things to have that move in the right direction, and so it’s a testament to his leadership and his commitment to athletics to say ‘How can we advocate and fight to get that five-year drop down to one less?’ And that’s a really big deal for student athletes because I think every competitive athlete wants to compete for something big at the end of the year, and I think our players are no different.

“I’m gonna run the statistics on this, because I’d be very interested to see how that shakes out, but you know we look back and there were certainly some games that could’ve gone either way, that we could’ve won. I reflect on some games in November and we went to Nashville. We had two really great games with nonconference opponents in Clarkson and Penn State, who were both Top 15 in the country at the time and those were 50-50 games. I think those could’ve easily gone either way, and I would just be curious statistically if some of those games do, where are we sitting? Because right now, I think we’re around 20 in the NPI (NCAA Percentage Index), and when you are in the top 11, that’s the national tournament, and so for us in our first few years to go from you know essentially, technically, the last-place team when you first start to climb by 10, you know 10 points or 10 teams in your first year and to climb another 10 to climb another 10, all of a sudden, we’re looking statistically at an opportunity.

“It doesn’t guarantee anything, but it does tell you that if your trajectory and your development remains the same that you at least give yourself a fighting chance of being a part of that national tournament type of picture one year from now, and so that’s the big overarching goal and that’s what everyone’s shooting for, but it does come down to those daily habits, that 1% better, doing it the right way over the offseason and putting in the time and effort. But it’s certainly something that I know our players are committed to.”

With the postseason rapidly approaching, Brausen thinks that both her program and women’s hockey is in good shape for the future.

“I think it’s a really exciting time, not only to be a part of St. Thomas, and that I think there’s no more exciting place to be in women’s hockey right now than the University of St. Thomas for a lot of reasons, but I think it’s an exciting time to be a part of girls and women’s hockey in general,” she said. “I mean, you just look at the PWHL and all the strides that it has made. It’s in its first couple years and they’re filling out these NHL facilities of 18,000 or 19,000+ people, and what a great thing for women’s hockey to have exposure like that and to just see how many people are excited to show up when they’re given the opportunity. I think that there’s a lot to be excited about in general, but certainly to be at St. Thomas, like I said, it just feels like there’s no place that has the same academic resources, the same hockey experience within our league. So, it’s been a lot of fun to be a part of and something that I feel really honored and excited to move forward into the future with.”