Role change for interim U of S coach
It’s quite an adjustment getting promoted from assistant coach to a head coach, admits Robin Ulrich.
“As an assistant coach you can be the funny, goofy kind of person who brings the lighter side in and that was the role I played,” says Ulrich, who is now the interim head coach of the of the University of Saskatchewan Huskies women’s hockey team.
“As a head coach you have to tone that back a bit. I lean a lot on our assistant coaches, Scott (Dutertre) and Mac (Brian McGregor). They know way more than I do about hockey so I have leaned on them a lot.”
Ulrich takes over from Steve Kook, who is on a one year professional leave of absence.
While new to being the boss, Ulrich is not new to the team.
She joined the Huskies as a player in 2004 and during her five-year career, the defenceman and former team captain was named a Canada West First Team All-Star and also earned the conference studentathlete community award.
She has spent the last five years as an assistant coach with the Dogs. The last two have been from a distance as Ulrich has been a high school physical education teacher at Lampman School in southern Saskatchewan.
Ulrich said she and Kook tossed around the idea that she might take the reins when he took a leave.
“It worked out that all the pieces fell into place. I was able to get a leave of absence from my contract with my school division (in Lampman) and they were awesome with letting me take this opportunity.”
For the past two years, Ulrich did some scouting for the Huskies and came up most weekends to watch games.
“I played that eye-in-the-sky role, gave him some opinions and talked to the girls — I played that intermediary who was somebody they could bounce ideas off of,” she said. “I just tried to stay involved as much as I could.”
She said knowing the players and keeping the system that is in place should make the transition a smooth one.
“You know the kids and you know them personally,” she said. “It brings a comfortability factor for them as well. Especially for the fifth-years, you don’t really like to have that upheaval in your last season. Hopefully they feel comfortable knowing it was somebody they knew and someone that wasn’t going to bring in huge sweeping changes or change the culture of the program.”
Huskie fifth-year defenceman and assistant captain Alyssa Dobler said it was a shock at first to hear that Kook was taking a leave, but was happy to find out Ulrich was the replacement.
“We weren’t sure what to think, but when the first day (of practice) came, it just felt natural with Robbie here,” said Dobler.
“I always looked up to Robbie, even as a D coach, so now that she is head coach we respect her opinion even more. You can go to her about any situation ... and she knows how to help and improve you as a player.”
“And she is following in Steve’s footsteps really well. Everything that she teaches us is based off of Steve’s principles.”
Keeping that momentum from last year where they tweaked their style of play is key, said Ulrich.
“I wanted to keep that consistent because I thought we were successful last year. In the second half of last year really showed how that change in style and a little bit of a change in philosophy in how we did things was really starting to pay off.
“We treat them like pros,” Ulrich said of the change. “There isn’t a different way to coach men and women. They can do the same things as the guys. We are coaching them to be hockey players — how to move pucks into space, how to create ice for ourselves and make reads on plays. You are not just going to go where the line gets drawn on the board every time.
“We are trying to bring in a little bit of unpredictability, changing things up.”
The Huskies have gone through a couple of marathon overtime playoff games in recent years in which they have been on the winning and losing end.
“We had the joy of winning those extended overtime series (against Regina) in 2013-14 to win our first CanWest championship, and then we had the heartbreak of losing a five OT game last year (against Manitoba in the playoffs),” Ulrich said, adding they can learn from those situations.
One lesson is to figure out how to generate more offence.
“We need to be able to capitalize on our chances,” Ulrich said. “And I think the girls came in (to this year) with a — for lack of a better term — pretty pissed off attitude about it. They have been going to the net, getting into the dirty, greasy areas and looking for rebounds.”
The Huskies were 2-3-1 in preseason games and open the regular season on the road Oct. 7-8 at UBC.