The University of Minnesota of Minnesota Duluth women's hockey has a rare upcoming weekend off from outside competition, but three of its players -- Sydney Brodt, Maddie Rooney (U.S. National Team) and Emma Soderberg (Swedish National Team) -- are in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to participate in the 2018 Four Nations Cup.
Just one week ago, Bulldog head coach Maura Crowell, (and current U.S. Under-18 National Team head coach) was on the ice in Chicago, Ill. at a U.S. National Team Pre-Four Nations Cup Camp with the post graduate part of the Four Nations roster. The camp, which ran Oct. 29 to Nov. 2, put Crowell on the ice with current senior national team players and Olympians for the first time in eight years. A U.S. U-18 coaching stalwart for the past three years, Crowell sat down with umdbulldogs.com earlier this week to talk firsthand about her experience at camp.
You spent last week at a U.S. Pre-Nations Cup Camp ahead of the Four Nations Cup set for Nov. 6-10 in Chicago. What players attended the camp and what was the common goal of it?
Crowell: The pre-camp was really for the post graduates on the Four Nations roster to get together and start developing some chemistry. And then we brought in some select U-18 players to participate and fill out the roster because there are so few of the post grads. (Current Bulldogs Rooney and Brodt joined the team Friday, the day that Crowell departed for Duluth.
You are currently the lone NCAA Division I head coach doubling as a U.S. National Team head coach. How hard is it to juggle your UMD coaching duties with your national team responsibilities?
Crowell: It's challenging, no question, and the reason this camp worked out this week is because our schedule allowed it with the Whitecaps exhibition game this weekend. Plus having Laura (assistant coach Laura Bellamy) here, someone who has worked for me these past four years, plus two years at Harvard. I leave on a regular basis and she's used to it so that certainly makes it possible. If I did not have someone here like, that I'm not sure I could do it quite so frequently.
The flip side of managing your UMD/U.S. head coaching responsibilities appear pretty obvious -- working with some of the best players and coaches in the world. Can you expand on that?
Crowell: For this week the coolest part of it for me was being on the ice with the national team players. I had not been on the ice with national team/Olympic players since like 2010, so this was the first time being back with the older group. One of my biggest takeaways -- and I told my team this yesterday -- was the way that they practiced and the intensity and focus they brought. They prepare for practice like most people prepare for games -- taping their sticks, headphones in, and a good dynamic workout ahead of time. But when they are on the ice, what I loved about them was the amount of communicating they do. And I don't mean just yelling for the puck, I mean when they are back in line. When something goes well, they talk about it, full analysis and breakdown, as well as accountability. Not just critiquing, but if anything critiquing themselves and helping others understand where they were and what they were doing. That's such a high level of comprehension.
How do you think your U.S. National Team coaching experience helped you to be a better coach at the collegiate level?
Crowell: I think even going away this week, there is a new national team coach, Bob Corkum, and he has an entire playbook. And I went over the entire playbook with those new coaches and those players and trying to implement new things. So I get to learn new things all the time and work with really good coaches and different people who have different ideas and different ways of doing things. I think if you just stay where you are in one place, you can get stuck in a rut a little bit, so I am constantly pushed outside my comfort zone, and I don't allow that to happen. I think when you are working with top elite athletes, whether they are U-18 or older, I think you are exposed just to a higher level of compete and hockey IQ. As a coach, you have to keep up with that too, you want to be one step ahead, so I think that helps too. Knowing our players can do that same stuff, raises my bar for them. I don't usually come back and say, well UMD can't do that. No, it's quite the opposite. I always think we can do this too, and I want to teach them the same sort of things.
