New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Expand the culture
Cavanaugh stayed at UConn to follow example set by Auriemma
STRATFORD — UConn men’s hockey had a historic season this year. The Huskies won their first Hockey East playoff game and reached the conference’s semifinals and championship game for the first time in program history.
But that wasn’t the reason coach Mike Cavanaugh chose to stay at UConn after becoming a candidate to lead the Boston College progam.
He chose to stay in Storrs instead of returning home to Massachusetts — and the program where he was an assistant coach for 18 years under Jerry York — because of his loyalty to UConn.
“UConn gave me my first head coaching job, and there was a lot of schools that had turned me down, or maybe I just wasn’t the right guy for the job as well, but I felt that loyalty to
wards the program,” he said. “When you build something from scratch and all of a sudden now you’re seeing the fruits of your labor and you see a brandnew arena being built and you’re seeing a top-notch recruiting class, just, it was really my heart was here and I didn’t want to go anywhere.”
Cavanaugh joined fellow UConn coaches Geno Auriemma (women’s basketball), Dan Hurley (men’s basketball) and Margaret Rodriguez (women’s soccer) in the second and final stop of this year’s UConn Coaches Road Show at Two Roads Brewing Company in Stratford.
Cavanaugh, who enters his 10th season leading the Huskies this fall, said it was the winning culture at UConn that has inspired him. It’s a culture he attributes to UConn’s most successful coaches.
“UConn has its own culture,” he said. “I think Jim Penders has it figured out, Geno obviously did, Jim Calhoun does, you just look around, Nancy Stevens did. There’s just a UConn culture of an athletic department and it was my job and my task to make sure that my team lived up to the UConn culture.”
When asked what he thought of Cavanaugh choosing to stay at UConn, Auriemma said he could see the school soon becoming a “hockey school.” He and the hockey coach carpooled to Tuesday’s event.
“I think it’s quite a big thing that the hockey coach at UConn had an opportunity to go coach at Boston College, one of the premier programs in the market, so that says a lot about Mike and the job that he’s done here,” Auriemma said. “I see a lot of us (women’s basketball) and our beginnings and I saw that when they hired Mike. I said, hockey could be like the next big thing at UConn because this is really a big hockey state.”
It’s that same sense of loyalty to UConn that Rodriguez credits to her time leading her alma mater.
“The coach prior to me was here for 37 years,” she said during the coaches’ panel in front of a 250-person crowd. “So to take over for someone who’s been in that spot for that many years who was also my coach, my mentor … I’m just humbled and I want to carry on the tradition.”
All four coaches will resume their late-spring, early-summer breaks and time away from their respective teams moving forward until summer school and workout sessions start. Auriemma said his players will report back to campus June 1 after having the last month-plus off following the end of the school year.
When asked what his favorite part was of this year’s roller-coaster of a season, the moment that came to mind for the Hall of Fame coach was how his team reacted to its loss at Georgia Tech.
“That was right after Paige got hurt and we lost,” Auriemma said. “We deserved to lose. We were lousy and they were good. When we got back, the feeling on the team was, ‘Don’t worry about it. That’s just one of those things that had to happen. Hang in there, Coach, we’re gonna be really good, just give us some time.’
“When you hear that and you feel that when you go to practice, doesn’t have to do anything with who wins the games, you knew that day that we were gonna be OK.”