UST Hockey’s Joel Johnson Pulling Double Duty As Women’s National Team Coach – WCCO

(AP) — It’s not usually somebody will get to expertise two possibilities of a lifetime. For Joel Johnson, alternative got here knocking a mere two months aside.

In April, he was promoted to grow to be the U.S. girls’s nationwide hockey staff coach following Bob Corkum’s abrupt resignation over COVID-19 protocols on the world championships. In June, Johnson was employed by St. Thomas College in St. Paul, Minnesota, to steer its girls’s hockey program that was making the leap to the Division I stage.

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“I feel it’s fascinating when somebody says excellent storm. It’s nonetheless a storm, and it’s nonetheless excellent,” Johnson stated of juggling two jobs. “And that’s type of the way it feels. It’s a large number. It’s busy. It’s a storm. However it’s excellent. … And I feel it’s superior.”

Daunting because the duties could be, it helps having each groups based mostly in Johnson’s yard. St. Thomas is a 20-minute drive from the USA Hockey girls’s facility in Blaine, permitting him to work with each groups on the identical day when the schedule permits.

Joel Johnson (Picture by Sam Wasson/Getty Photos)

Additionally making issues manageable is Johnson having the backing of officers at each packages, with the understanding his prime focus this 12 months is getting ready the U.S. girls to defend their Olympic gold medal on the Beijing Winter Video games subsequent month.

The prospect to construct his personal program from the bottom up whereas additionally teaching on the worldwide stage made it unattainable for Johnson to say no.

Then once more, as he put it, “I’ve at all times stated sure, and I’ve by no means been disenchanted.”

At 47, Johnson isn’t any stranger to multitasking. Throughout a six-year stint at his alma mater, Bethel College, he coached males’s hockey, males’s and ladies’s golf, and earned 2010 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Convention soccer coach of the 12 months honors.

He then went on to double hockey duties at Minnesota. As an affiliate coach, he helped the Gophers win six nationwide titles, whereas on the similar time teaching USA Hockey’s Beneath-22 girls’s staff earlier than touchdown the assistant’s job on the nationwide staff underneath Corkum in 2018.

His familiarity with the U.S. gamers made him a pure for promotion, whereas USA Hockey performed a task in recommending Johnson for the St. Thomas job.

“It’s been fairly seamless,” U.S. staff basic supervisor Katie Million stated. “We all know that this staff is the precedence, and we all know he’ll do a superb job with each.”

St. Thomas assistant Bethany Brausen had no doubts, having beforehand labored with and performed underneath Johnson at Minnesota.

“He’s definitely unfold very skinny. However I additionally knew if there was somebody within the nation that would do each jobs and do them nicely it might be Joel Johnson,” stated Brausen, who serves because the Tommies head coach in Johnson’s absence. “Even whenever you get Joel Johnson in a restricted capability, I consider you’re nonetheless getting among the greatest teaching you could possibly ever get as a participant.”

The hot button is Johnson’s skill to delegate, by usually leaving game-day choices and observe plans to Brausen and fellow assistant Marty Sertich.

Such was the case when Johnson confirmed up someday and informed Brausen he’d function her puck-pusher.

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“I laughed, as a result of I’m like, ‘You’re probably the most overqualified puck-pusher on this planet,’” she stated. “He has the humility to indicate up and say, ‘Hey, I wasn’t right here immediately and I won’t be the most effective individual to make this choice.’”

U.S. gamers credit score Johnson for the belief he locations in them.

“We belief what he’s doing, his imaginative and prescient for us and what he has deliberate for us to achieve success in Beijing,” veteran ahead Brianna Decker stated.

Johnson has taken an upbeat strategy in coping with the stinging reminiscence of a 3-2 time beyond regulation loss to Canada within the gold medal recreation of the world championships in August.

“We misplaced in a tricky, powerful recreation. And I feel I’ve shared with our staff that shedding brings readability that profitable doesn’t,” Johnson stated. “It doesn’t imply that we performed poorly. It doesn’t imply that we really feel like we are able to’t win. It simply means we’ve bought some readability.”

Johnson positioned his concentrate on poring over video and revisiting notes to first decide what he may have finished higher, earlier than assessing what his gamers may enhance upon.

Simply as necessary was letting go and shifting on.

“It’s over. It’s finished. And it doesn’t matter anymore as a result of we’re not attempting to win the world championships,” Johnson stated. “Canada gained. Congratulations to them.”

Although the U.S. roster is basically unchanged from August, there may be an expectation youthful gamers, resembling defender Caroline Harvey and ahead Abbey Murphy (each 19), may see elevated ice time in Beijing to counter Canada’s pace.

St. Thomas athletic director Phil Esten laughed over how he often bumps into Johnson on campus, in noting the 2 discuss on the telephone or textual content extra often.

“It’s a as soon as in a lifetime alternative for Joel, and it’s one thing that I’d by no means ask him to have given up,” Esten stated. “And admittedly, it’s a kind of as soon as in a lifetime factor for St. Thomas to have the ability to affiliate ourselves: Our head coach can be USA Hockey’s head coach. These are issues that don’t come alongside fairly often.”

The fledgling Tommies are off to a 4-15-1 begin taking part in within the Central Collegiate Hockey Affiliation, which options the nation’s three top-ranked groups.

For Brausen, there’s greater than X’s and O’s with Johnson in crediting him for placing in time to get to know his gamers and workers.

Whereas working collectively at Minnesota, Brausen recalled sharing a tough interval in her life with Johnson. Following observe, she heard Johnson name out as she was strolling to her automotive.

“He was sprinting out of the rink to come back seize me one final time and provides me a hug and inform me how a lot he liked sharing life with me,” Brausen stated. “That was a second simply reflective of Joel. He by no means misses the chance to indicate up for individuals, and to make it extra than simply hockey.”

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