Jenna Trubiano Interview, Pt. 1

Coach Tribs, head of Michigan’s club women’s hockey team, discusses her program from top-to-bottom with us. We focus on recruitment, youth girl’s hockey in MI, and some challenges of her work at U-M

Jenna Trubiano is the head coach of the club women’s hockey team at the University of Michigan.  She was kind enough to take time out of an extraordinarily busy schedule to talk with us about the program she is building.  What follows is the first half of a conversation we had over the phone last Thursday; the second half will run a week from today.  Jenna talks us through her program through a variety of different angles from the recruiting process for a club team to youth girls hockey in the state of Michigan.  All of her answers were insightful, but we would call special attention to her final one, about the frustration and slow progress she has overseen in her time with the program in terms of support from U-M.  If you would like to support her team, check out their newly redesigned website michiganwomenshockey.com and use this link to donate to their operation.

Gulo Gulo Hockey: I’d love to hear more about your process for recruiting players.  I assume being a club team and not being able to offer scholarships conditions everything else, but can you tell me more about that process and how it overlaps with the regular application process at U-M?

Jenna Trubiano: In the past, recruiting efforts have been pretty minimal; it was just whoever showed up.  [When I was going through that process], I had applied to Michigan, gotten in, and then contacted the coaching staff, but, where we’re at now and with programs we’re competing against, we are trying to attend more recruiting events, identify players that have the skillset and the academics and that want to come to Michigan.  Last season was my first application cycle as a head coach.  I’ve been going to recruiting events.  I help [potential recruits] through the application deadlines, the early action and then regular decision.  Just trying to help them navigate those.  We’re getting to the point where we’re actively recruiting players to play on our team, but we still have some that get into the university, are already attending, and then they want to play.  Hopefully down the road, we can recruit a little bit earlier.  This past season was the first time we’ve formally committed players to our team.  There’s nothing that they sign; it’s just identifying them as having a roster spot.  This is the first season we’ve done that, and it’s worked out really well.  We have to order our own gear, so knowing those numbers before the second week of school is very helpful.

GGH: If you talk to a freshman who has just gotten to campus and they say they’re interested in club hockey but kind of on the fence about it, what is your pitch to them?

JT: I think for those that have played competitive hockey—AAA, AA hockey for women—at the highest level they have lived that hockey experience most of their lives.  Personally, I can’t imagine my life without it.  Our program offers a unique opportunity for those women who want to play for a very competitive program on and off the ice.  Obviously, Michigan is one of the top public schools, so they’re able to go to the football games, travel, play a very competitive schedule, but it’s not as intense as varsity is and academics always come first, so the biggest thing I find for students is trying to balance academics with everything else they want to do on campus.  I think our program does a really good job at trying to find a happy medium, and now we’re finally at the point where we’re willing to be competitive and make some sacrifices.  It’s really exciting to see.

GGH: I’d love to learn more from you about the youth girl’s hockey scene in Michigan in general.  One of the angles I’m interested in here is access to the sport within the state.  I know you played for Little Caesar’s and were a part of that circuit.  Can you tell me more about what it looks like today?

JT: From what I can see (without pulling up the numbers), there’s a growing interest with girls participating in hockey.  I do think there are a lot of barriers.  Obviously, there are financial barriers with entering the sport of ice hockey.  I think that as a state Michigan is really trying to push high school level programs, which are still not recognized by the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA).  We have really strong tier two programs.  We have some of the top, if not the top AAA programs in the country that are continually producing Division I players and national level players.  Personally, I’d love to see that continue to grow.  With our program being based in Ann Arbor and having a connection with the Ann Arbor Youth Hockey organization, we’re trying to build a connection there, although it gets tough in season sometimes.  That’s something I’m passionate about.

GGH: You mentioned the connection to youth hockey in Ann Arbor.  I noticed that your roster actually has six players from Ann Arbor on it.  Obviously, it’s not shocking that there are Ann Arbor kids on a team at U-M, but can you tell me a bit more about how you’ve fostered that relationship?

JT: It’s a great question.  Last year was a little tricky because of all the COVID protocols to try to bring youth to campus.  What we’re hoping to do this season, starting with our intrasquad scrimmage, is having [youth players out], have them meet our players, ask them questions about academics, ask them what they’re studying, what their hockey background was.  What we’re hoping to do as we continue the season is to establish a better connection with them.  I know the youth director Peggy Costello pretty well.  She’s reached out to me over volunteer events.  And it’s hard.  Students have a million other things going on, but I’m hoping over the summer we’re able to do something.  It’s just going to be a lot of paperwork.  But we do have a lot of Ann Arbor connections.  It’s interesting that you noted that, because it’s not something I really realized, but now that I’m looking at our team picture I’m like “Wow there is a lot of Ann Arbor.”

GGH: Yeah I noticed that there were a few kids from out of state and far, and then Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor.  Going back to that idea of youth girls hockey in Michigan.  I suppose this is sort of a leading question, but I’ll ask it anyway: does that feel like something that having a Division I program within the state would radically impact in a trickle-down sort-of way.  Exposing my own ignorance, I had never heard that point you just made about high school programs even struggling with recognition.  Do you feel like that’s something that might improve if Michigan added D1 women’s hockey?

JT: I know a lot of people will argue with me on this one, but I’m going to say, yes, 1,000%.  Because I think that women need role models.  By having a Division I program, you’re offering a unique opportunity in entering a unique market for the state of Michigan.  With the growth of women’s sports right now—with the WNBA, the NWSL—all these things are growing exponentially.  Someone’s going to hop on the train eventually, and I’d love that to be Michigan, but obviously it’s tough from my understanding.  I know for me growing up I would watch the Detroit Red Wings.  I was fortunate that my dad grew up with six sisters, so my sisters and I all played sports, but I think for girls that don’t have that connection, maybe their friends or family bring them to a game and they can meet with a player afterwards and that sparks their interest.  There’s a huge opportunity that should be capitalized on, and I don’t see why [the University of] Michigan couldn’t to be honest.

GGH: Yeah, it does feel like there is this kind of dissonance where you have all this momentum behind women’s sports, but institutions are slow to realize it.  As a hockey fan, I feel like there’s so much more coverage of women’s hockey, even than there was five, ten years ago when it was really just the Olympics that got discussed.  But then you also mention that it’s not exactly an easy thing to flip a switch and get DI women’s hockey at Michigan.  Do you feel as though that goal is closer than it was when you first joined the program as a student, or does it still feel distant or that the same hurdles are in place?

JT: I think a little bit of both.  I think now as a coach I have a better understanding of how I can lead our program.  How I can make decisions that better our future and our program.  I think social media has been a huge tool.  I wasn’t really on Twitter until I tweeted something a little emotionally that blew up.  I don’t know how you can say “we’re gonna spend $41 million on a scoreboard,” but you can basically charge students that already pay full tuition to participate in a facility on campus [Trubiano’s team pays to practice and play at U-M’s own Yost Ice Arena, and it is not allowed to use on-campus facilities for off-ice team workouts].  That just doesn’t make any sense to me.  I see things in that perspective now, and I’m using my platform to advocate for my students, on and off the ice.  In the past when I was a student, we would hop in a university van or personal vehicle and drive fifteen hours out to Delaware.  We just did it because that was the norm.  This season, we’re going to have to pay for it, but we’re getting buses for every trip.  The team is going to be together.  We’re not going to have to worry about students driving and getting into accidents, because that did happen last year.  Everybody’s fine, but all these things that should be the norm, the bare minimum, we’re not really getting that from the University right now.  We’re having conversations, but at a big university, things move slowly, so hopefully what I’m doing is helping and showing that we’re putting in the effort with fundraising and community outreach because we want to do it.  This is technically our twenty-eighth year but team twenty-seven due to COVID.  We’ve been around a while; we were up for varsity status in ‘97-98.  We’re just going to put our head down and keep going.  We just got new jerseys for the first time in ten years.  It’s a really big deal for us, just trying to do these little things.  Everybody’s got their name on the back of their jerseys.  We’ve got legitimate winged helmets now.  We used to get laughed at, and coaches would go “well we’re at Michigan, and they’re not.”  Ok but, we want to feel good about being a member of the Michigan women’s hockey team.  Just little things like that to add legitimacy to our travel, to our training staff, to our social media.  We’ve done a great job I think.  Taking those little baby steps, chipping away at it, is what I’m trying to do.  From where this program was in 2013, we’ve had players transfer in from NCAA programs, players want to come to Michigan and want to play. I’m getting a ton of recruiting emails, and that’s sort of the landscape of the ACHA right now.  Recruitment and academics.  It’s very competitive hockey. 

Thank you for reading! Come back same time, same place next week for part two with Coach Tribs. Thank you to @umichwhockey on Twitter for today’s preview image. If you haven’t already, you can support our work by subscribing through the link below.