"My Priorities This Year? Obviously We Have to Win": Jenna Trubiano Previews Michigan Women's Hockey's Team 28
After returning making ACHA Nationals for the first time since 2016 a year ago, Jenna Trubiano and the Michigan women's hockey team have their sights set even higher in 2023-24
One year after qualifying for ACHA Nationals for the first time since 2016 and earning a top ten finish in the final rankings, there’s no sense in being coy about Team 28’s aspirations.
“Expectations are high,” says Jenna Trubiano, head coach of the University of Michigan women’s hockey team. “It’s really exciting though because obviously making the national tournament last year for the first time since I was a team member is exciting. We have nine new players that are joining us, including three transfers, so I’m really looking forward to how everybody fits into the team. And obviously having two really strong goaltenders is going to help us even more as we get deep into our season, so the expectations are high. There’s a lot of excitement. I’m excited to see the support for our team and how that’s going to continue to grow. From my perspective, we need to win, we need to perform, so really looking forward to this weekend and showcasing that.”
Trubiano’s Wolverines will open their 2023-24 campaign this evening against Concordia University at Arctic Edge of Canton, before taking on Michigan State tomorrow afternoon in Mount Clemens.
The spine of last year’s ACHA finalists returns in the form of players like goaltender Sandrine Ponnath (second team All-ACHA a year ago), defenders Katie German and Cara Kolwich, and sophomore forwards Julia Lindahl and Emily Maliszewski. Still, Trubiano notes that even with all the returners, each team inevitably develops its own independent character.
“I think every team is different,” she explains. “Every team I’ve been on, I’ve coached so far, the dynamics are always a little bit different. The one thing that we want to make sure is that we focus on is that the culture remains positive.”
This year, the Wolverines will embrace what Trubiano refers to as the Five Ps: be present, be prepared, be persistent, be positive, and prioritize. “That’s the culture we’re fostering.”
Over the summer, the CCHWA rolled back a rule that prevented organized team activities prior to Labor Day, allowing Michigan to get its season started earlier than ever. When a new school year begins, the team’s player recruitment process is unique.
Unlike for a varsity coach, Trubiano’s potential talent pool isn’t composed of hand-picked, recruited scholarship athletes. While she is proactive in scouting and recruiting players who might be interested in pursuing the ACHA route, Trubiano is ultimately at the mercy of the University’s admissions office. She takes pride in staying abreast of potential new players in each incoming class, but inevitably, there are a few pleasant surprises when day one of try-outs rolls around. As she explains it, Trubiano’s organizing principle when it comes to recruitment is “casting a wide net.”
Among this year’s new recruits is freshman goaltender Emma Johns, who arrives in Ann Arbor from the Grand Rapids Griffins AA 19U team. Trubiano is optimistic the freshman can help lighten the burden on Ponnath, who played every game for the team a year ago.
“I think having to rely on [Ponnath] these past two seasons, obviously that’s a lot of ice at the collegiate level for a goaltender,” Trubiano said. “What I’ve told the team since we’ve been on the ice is that everybody’s competing for a spot and that includes the goaltenders, so I’m not really sure how it’s gonna play out yet. We have two games this upcoming weekend, so we’ll have to have some conversations with players but everybody at this moment is still competing for a spot in the line-up for Friday.”
In Lucy Hansen, Allison Fleszar, and Keegan Gustafson, Trubiano believes she has three transfer additions who will play key roles in the coming season. Both Hansen and Fleszar actually transferred in last January, but they were ineligible to play at the time because the team was already at the league’s roster limit.
Hansen, a Minnesotan who played a season of NCAA DI hockey at Franklin Pierce, actually recruited Gustafson to join the team. Meanwhile, Fleszar scored against Trubiano’s Wolverines while playing for Michigan State in the rivals’ first meeting a year ago. Gustafson is playing her first hockey in a year, after spending a season away from the sport last season at Villanova.
Katie German will be at the helm of Michigan’s leadership group, the junior having been elected captain. Trubiano is delighted with the selection.
“She’s obviously very competitive, she wants to win, and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to get there,” Trubiano said of the junior. “She’s great at pushing the players on the team when they need to be pushed, which is something as a coach that’s really helpful, especially on the ice. And she understands the game really well. I’ve worked with her through Hockey Intelligence, which we do a lot of summer camps through that company. So I’ve worked with her there, which has been great to see her work with youth players when we have a girls camp, so I think she just really represents our program to a T. She’s competitive. She’s at Michigan for the right seasons. She wants to win, she wants to compete, but she also prioritizes academics.”
A year ago, German was the team’s recruiting chair, which meant she was the point person for all new team members as they settled in. “I think she played a large part in their recruiting process, because they could relate to her and she was really great at communicating about our program and what student life at Michigan is all about,” Trubiano said.
Meanwhile, Trubiano takes excitement from another year of growth for Maliszewski and Lindahl. That pair will begin the season on a line with Kelsey Swanson, a trio that found tremendous success during the stretch run a year ago.
“So with Emily last year, and I guess for Julia too, we knew we needed them in the line-up, but we weren’t really sure where they fit,” Trubiano explains. “So I think to start the season we had Emily centering the third or fourth line. We weren’t really sure where to put her and then just every practice, every game watching her she just continued to prove herself. With Julia, she’s gained a lot of confidence, and I think she’s really settled into life at Michigan, especially being an out-of-state student. For me as a coach, just continuing to put them in situations that they’re going to be successful and building their confidence, because Julia is just a natural goal scorer, and we didn’t really find that out until I think our first game against Dearborn. That was when she just took off, and that’s when we realized we’ve got to find a spot for her on the power play, top line, whatever it is. As of right now, I think our plan is to keep them together, but with all the talent we have this year, especially on the forward end, anything can happen.”
While so often news around the lack of support for the team can be exhausting, the Michigan women’s hockey team was grateful to receive good news from the office of Santa Ono earlier this week.
“So our leadership team received an email yesterday evening that the president’s office would again grant to cover club sports that are paying to use athletic facilities for their practices and competitions,” per Trubiano. “We’re super grateful for President Santa Ono’s support of our program and club sports in general, so we’re hoping that we can get him out to a game again last year.”
Ono’s office also footed the bill for last season’s use of Yost Ice Arena, but at the time, the office suggested it would only be a one-time reimbursement. In the end, that came to roughly $36,000 from an overall operating budget of about $180,000.
The team isn’t done with fundraisers like its latest venture at the Washtenaw Dairy earlier this month, and it’s still frustrating that the team has to benefit from hand-outs of this unique nature as opposed to more sustainable forms of university support, but Ono’s office’s contribution is enormous nonetheless.
This time last year, Trubiano had her eye on a return to ACHA Nationals, but now, with that feather already in the team’s cap, she has her eye on more.
“I’m always optimistic about everything, because I have to be,” she says of her goals for the season and the winding road toward varsity status. “If I focus on all the negative that’s when it’s going to impact others outside of myself, so I’m optimistic. My priorities this year? Obviously we have to win. We have to have a winning season. We need to win the league tournament at the end of February. We need to compete for national championship. So my goal as coach is to put our program in the best situation possible to be able to compete for the league championship, to be able to compete for a national championship. Because if we win a national championship, given the status that we're at now, from my perspective, it's okay, with incremental support, what else can we do? So that's what I'm focusing on this year.”
A few weeks ago, Trubiano traveled to the Stoney Creek Showcase in Hamilton, Ontario for another scouting and recruiting trip. It was a AAA tournament, the bleachers packed with parents who are well acquainted with the options available to their daughters in the NCAA Division I and III ranks. However, clad in her Michigan women’s hockey gear, Trubiano had a number of parents come up to her and proclaim their surprise at learning there was women’s hockey at the University of Michigan of any kind. The experience served as both a reminder of and motivator for the work that still needs to happen to continue to grow her team’s profile.
“In my women’s hockey bubble, I feel like I've done a pretty good job of educating people, but I go [to Stoney Creek] because it's one of the largest tournaments in North America that's kicking off the season and there's probably over 30, 50 college coaches there, including myself, and there are still people that don't know we have a program, even at the ACHA level. So there's still education that needs to be done,” Trubiano says. She adds that ultimately varsity status is beyond her control, so grassroots growth remains more of a focal point.
“I'm going to do everything I can to build our program. But I think just we've got momentum, like we've talked about. We've probably got more eyes on us this year than we had last year just because of the momentum and the publicity we've gotten. And that means we have to perform.”
Odds & Ends:
Men’s Exhibition Opener
The University of Michigan men’s hockey team will play its exhibition opener Saturday night at Yost against British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University. Simon Fraser’s hockey program is a club team, playing in the BCIHL. Per reporting from the summer from Mike McMahon, the school is actually exploring and pursuing the possibility of playing Division I hockey in the coming season. In the short term though, the Red Leafs will provide the Wolverines with a tune-up in anticipation of the following weekend’s regular season opening series against Providence College.
Given the nature of this weekend’s competition, I’m going to hold off on further preview content for the time being, but check back next week for a review of the game and more thorough season preview on the men’s side.
Thanks to @umichhockey on Twitter for this preview image. You can support our work further by subscribing or by giving us a tip for our troubles at https://ko-fi.com/gulogulohockey.