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.”

The post New Boss On The Bench, Part 2 appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

A few weeks ago, Bethany Brausen officially became the head coach of the St. Thomas women’s hockey program after having the interim tag placed on her for 12 games following the abrupt resignation of then-head coach Joel Johnson.

After a successful playing and coaching career at the University of Minnesota, along with the Tommies’ sweep of then-No. 4 Minnesota Duluth during Brausen’s interim stage, it was no surprise that UST decided to put the future of the program in her hands.

Hockey is basically in Brausen’s blood, and some family influences helped guide her into fully embracing the sport she loves.

“My dad, he always kind of played, more informally though, so he would always kind of just do some pick-up hockey and stuff, so we definitely grew up in the rink,” Brausen said recently. “But a lot of the credit I give to my hockey involvement was actually for my cousin Connor, and he was like my best friend. I was attached at the hip with Connor, and he decided that he was wanting to play hockey, and so anything that he did, I was sold on as well. So, looking back, that was probably the biggest reason I got in was my best friend, my cousin. And then I feel like once I started playing, as most people know, it’s a hard sport to get out of. It’s just something you fall in love with pretty quickly.”

After earning Ms. Hockey honors as a senior and leading Roseville Area High School to a state championship in 2010, Brausen stayed in the Twin Cities and decided to suit up for the WCHA powerhouse Golden Gophers, even though it wasn’t as easy of a decision as one might think.

Choosing the Gophers
“When I was growing up, Minnesota was kind of the premier program in the Twin Cities,” she said. “It was really the only option in some ways for Minnesota kids just to get really high-level visibility, and so when I was growing up, there were people that I knew like Winny Brodt and Ronda Curtin, they were both Roseville people, and they ended up at Minnesota. So, I think I was kind of the traditional story of growing up in the Twin Cities and having the Gophers 10 minutes away from my home, and so that was definitely a big part for me when I went through the recruiting process.

“There were some other schools that I was considering. I thought about going out east. I even considered, you know, could I go to an Ivy League, things like that. But at the time just growing up in the Twin Cities and having an option that was close to home that had just such a rich tradition of success was definitely a big part of it.”

Brausen helped lead the Gophers to back-to-back national championships in 2013 and 2014 and then back to the title game in 2015. Then she decided to turn to coaching, which ended up being a perfect fit for her considering what she majored in during her time at Minnesota.

“I think to some degree I always knew that I wanted to coach in some capacity,” she said. “What’s interesting is I think growing up and even into my college years, I don’t know if coaches do a good enough job really kind of advocating and promoting a career profession of coaching. So, for me when I was at Minnesota, I’d never really thought about it as a full-time job. I actually originally got my master’s (degree) in counseling, and then I was pretty much set up with my PhD applications. I thought I’d go on and become a psychologist and maybe work in sports psychology, or industrial organizational psychology.

“So that was kind of my path originally and then at that point when I was starting my second year of my master’s program is actually when (Gophers head) coach (Brad) Frost called me and offered for me to come back and coach Minnesota. I think I always knew I wanted to coach. I coached at high school (at Breck) for a couple years. I coached in OS stuff all growing up but for me, I never really thought of it as a career profession until the opportunity presented itself. And then, similar to falling in love with hockey at a young age, it felt impossible not to fall in love with the coaching side of it as well later.”

When asked if her multiple degrees have helped her as a coach, Brausen said they definitely have played a role.

“My undergraduate was in psychology,” she said. “I think that that really applies to any sector that you go into and that’s kind of why I was drawn to that degree originally and then the masters in counseling. I actually did a internship with Premier Sports Psychology as well during that time and so, I really got pretty nuanced in the mental side of sports, and really just kind of the mental side of life, too, and how we can be the healthiest version of ourselves. And so, I think between those two programs and then the current one I’m in right now is actually in organizational leadership.

“So, for me, education has always been something I’ve been really passionate about and I just believe that everyone can and should be lifetime learners if we want to keep getting better. So, I definitely think between those three different types of degree programs it’s really set me up to be a really well-rounded coach.”

As far as her PhD goes, the soon to be Dr. Bethany is in her last year of her program and is in her dissertation stage before she’ll be defending it later in 2025. The topic is appropriately related to women’s hockey, which is a topic “near and dear to her heart.”

“I’m looking at four different coaches across the country Division 1 women’s hockey, and the question I’m trying to answer is what are the thoughts, beliefs, and practices of these four coaches who seek to help their student athletes flourish,” she said. “Essentially the question is really about how do we go above and beyond, kind of, traditional approaches to coaching. How do we go beyond kind of just black-and-white there’s a player you have their coach and it’s kind of old-school and traditional, but how do we go beyond that and actually develop these student athletes holistically and from a social psychological academic full life perspective?

“So that’s the answer, or the question I’m trying to answer, and I will get back to you in some months hopefully. If I get some good insights in that way.”

Brausen says all four of the coaches she’s researching are female and not just from the WCHA, which makes for an interesting study.

“It’s called purpose of sampling,” she said. “So, what you do is, if you were actually kind of ingrained or engulfed into a certain population or a certain demographic, you can actually hand select people based on your experience or feedback from others of who would be the best candidates, and so that’s how I went about selecting my participants. I can’t say specifically who they are from an anonymous standpoint, but they are all female and that was just by chance. It could’ve been a male, but just by chance, the four that were really the best fit for the study were females. I have a couple of head coaches, and a couple are associates or assistant coaches. I have one that’s an Ivy League coach, I have some from the WCHA, and some from other conferences. So, it’s really a nice blend to get some different perspectives from a wide range. So, it’s been fun.”

Joining the Tommies as an assistant coach
With a psych background and a successful tenure at Minnesota, Brausen joined the Tommies bench and there were a couple of factors that made her switch from maroon and gold to purple and gray.

“I think the biggest thing is that, number one, I had been with Minnesota both as a player and as a coach for so many years at that point, so nearly a decade, and it was fun and it was rewarding and it was so many great things, but it was a very seasoned program,” she said. “So, for me, the opportunity to go somewhere that was new and different and really building from the foundation up, was pretty much the opposite experience of what I currently had. Like with academics, I’m just a really high achiever by nature where I want to do things differently. I want to always keep pushing myself, and so for me, the opportunity to go coach somewhere that was new, and was different, and was building something from that foundation level was such a new challenge and very exciting for me.

“And the other part of it is I went around and I walked the St. Thomas campus when I was considering coaching there. I vividly remember the thought of ‘Gosh, it’s going to take some years. It might take three or four years to really kind of start to build that program, but that is not a program I want to recruit against in the future.’ I just remember vividly having that thought because as a potential student athlete when I walked around that campus, this is where I would’ve wanted to go. If I could do the recruiting process now today, the fact that it’s this beautiful, small private school in a very safe part of the Twin Cities, your professors come to your games, they know you by name, they know your family members’ names. It was just a different academic and athletic experience. Just being a lot more intimate. Our athletic director (Phil Esten) and our sports administrators, they’re at almost every single game.

“So, it’s just a different environment at St. Thomas. So, I think it was both of those things. It was this new and different challenge that was so different than anything I’ve experienced and then on the other side of it, it’s not for everyone necessarily, but for the right people looking for something different in our conference. St. Thomas offers a completely different experience than any other school in the WCHA.”

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