“You've seen what we're able to do with minimal support…imagine if we had incremental support in any way”: Jenna Trubiano on What’s Next for Michigan Women’s Hockey

Part II of our interview with Jenna Trubiano, reflecting on the ‘22-23 season. Trubiano discusses recruiting, continuing to build her program, and the path forward

As promised, here is Part II of our interview with CCHWA Coach of the Year Jenna Trubiano, University of Michigan women’s hockey coach.  In case you missed it, here is Part I of that interview—a reflection on ACHA Nationals in March and on Team 27’s historic season.  Today, our focus will be on the future of women’s hockey at U-M.  The original interview was conducted over the phone on March 29th and has been edited for clarity.

Gulo Gulo Hockey: To switch gears again, as far as the recruitment process and projecting forward into next year, where do things stand with regards to this ongoing cycle?

Jenna Trubiano: So actually, I'd been hoping that the admission decisions would come out on the 24th and that would have been consistent with what Michigan has done in the past, but there was not a decision dropped. I've been religiously following this Reddit page—Like it's bad, it’s unhealthy [Laughs]. But it's important for me to know when students get in or when they have decisions available, because there are the youth national tournaments coming up, and I do have to start thinking about next year and looking at our roster and potential options. But regular decision should come out, if my sources are correct on Friday, March 31 at 3pm, but for students that were postponed early action, or students that applied regular decision, they should have either a decision of being accepted or denied or wait-listed by the 31st at 3pm. [This did prove to be the time at which admissions decisions were announced.]  So based on that, what I did last year, I'll probably do something similar this year is look at students that have been admitted and, based on the positions that we need to fill, their hockey backgrounds, talking with your coaches, and players that I've seen in person or I've seen film of, I'll kind of go from there and build out what we believe to be the most competitive roster for Team 28. 

We do have one player already committed for the next season that will be a first-year student. Her name's Emma Johns, she's a goaltender—obviously always need those. She was admitted Early Action, which is very impressive, and she came to visit campus two days after she was admitted and then committed to Michigan within I think three or four days. We're super excited to have her and she's playing in the national tournament this weekend in California with the Grand Rapids Griffins 19U Tier Two tournament, and I played with her coach at Caesars, my year of nineteens.  Her name is Tae Otte, and she's done a fantastic job growing that Grand Rapids program. She's been director of girls hockey over there. Her coach said the best things about her, so we're super excited to have Emma next year. And we have two transfer students that joined us this year, but that we didn’t roster for the second semester.  That’s Lucy Hanson, who played at Franklin Pierce University, NCAA Division I, and Allison Fleszar, who played at Salve Regina for a season, NCAA DIII, and then played at Michigan State, ACHA Division I for first semester and then transferred to Michigan. So they'll both be joining us next season as well.

GGH: With that, as you get more familiar with this process, have you started to cultivate particular recruiting pipelines, whether its geographic or based on relationships with programs or coaches?  I know to some extent you’re at the mercy of the regular application/admission process, but are those types of things starting to crystallize?

JT: That's a great question. I think with this being my second application cycle, I am starting to build connections with coaches and programs that have 2024s and 25s interested in our program, because they have former teammates and friends that come through our program. So the Grand Rapids Griffins, they were in the state championship for 19U, and they won at the 16U level this year.  And then Little Caesars Farmington Hills, they're a very, very strong program as well—their nineteens won the state championship, and Emily Maliszewski, her dad is actually a coach for that 19U program, So we're hoping to bring in a few of those women for next year, but we're still waiting on decisions

GGH: We’ve talked about this before, but, in reference to the recent article in the Daily about Julia Lindahl, what I found really interesting was hearing her discuss her process of getting to school as a student-athlete who was weighing DIII varsity hockey against club hockey at a bigger school and eventually picking that route.  It sounded like the biggest differentiator for her was the academics at Michigan, but do you feel like targeting players like her—who are choosing between DIII and club—is generally true of the players you are interested in? 

JT: Yeah, I would say my process [when I applied to Michigan] was very similar to Julia’s, and I know many other players have had a similar process in terms of recruiting at the AAA level, or in Minnesota at the high school level, which is obviously very, very competitive. They want to get to the next level, the coaches want to get you to the next level, and that next level for them is NCAA. And I can't remember if you and I talked about my recruiting process, but I didn't even know Michigan had a team until after I was admitted. And that's actually what [Julia] said verbatim.  My goal, as the coach of this program now, is to educate players, so that they want to come to Michigan. It's not a fallback if something doesn't work out; my goal is to help build this into something that becomes a destination. It starts with social media, it starts with me going to recruiting events as much as I can, just increasing visibility and talking with parents, coaches and players, because the stigma still exists today that ACHA hockey is club hockey and it's anything but that now…From my perspective, you've seen what we're able to do with minimal support, like imagine if we had incremental support in any way. So those students that are highly academic, that maybe want a bigger school and don't want to limit themselves to a smaller Division III school that may not offer a program that they want to pursue. And I know with Julia, she's in the Taubman School of Architecture, which is obviously a very, very competitive program at the University of Michigan. And I remember talking with her, and Michigan was the only school that she was looking at that offered that program, so I'm super excited that she's able to pursue her dream career and play hockey at the same time.

GGH: That’s awesome.  As far as continuing to build the program, how do you balance building the best ACHA program you can with trying to eventually establish a DI varsity program here?

JT: In my mind, they overlap a little bit. So I guess my goal as a coach is to help build the program, and with that's gonna come on-ice success, there's gonna be often success, gonna come from building just the best possible experience for our student athletes. And I think, going from that, obviously, there's things I can't control at the university, but I think if we continue to take steps in the right direction to build our program, to increase the visibility of our program at the University of Michigan, I think  it's a great possibility that eventually, we will have a women's varsity program at University of Michigan. But again, my main focus right now in this moment is just to do everything I can to build our program, given the resources we have, the hurdles, the barriers, the support, whatever it is, we're going to do whatever we can to put the program in the best possible position that if they wanted to choose a varsity sport for women at the University of Michigan, they might consider us.

GGH: To start wrapping up here, we had spoken briefly earlier in the season about some internal conversations around increased University support for club programs.  Do you have any update on where that process stands?

JT: We have had conversations, we hope they continue those conversations. We understand things move very slowly at the University of Michigan because it is such a large university, but our hope is to build little recognition for non-varsity athletes on campus.

GGH: That’s great.  One last question for you.  When you’re doing the work of leading this long-term project that you know isn’t going to happen quickly, what keeps you motivated and pressing forward when you do encounter various hurdles on that path?

JT: So it's crazy as we were talking about that, I just felt I have a smile on my face, because  this is what I love, this is what I'm passionate about. I truly believe this is why I ended up at Michigan. Obviously, I had options to go to many different schools, but I firmly believe I came to the University of Michigan for this exact reason. Everything that’s led up to this point has been difficult, but it's exciting to see the progress that we've made in a year and knowing that at this point next year where will we be, and I don't know where we’ll be, but my hope is that we're more successful than we were this year. So just really looking forward to continuing to build up momentum. Obviously the support that we've gotten this year has been incredible. It's something we've never had before. And that's also a driving factor in keeping me motivated—knowing that people are watching, people care. We obviously have twenty-plus students on our team that are putting in the time and effort in the classroom, on the ice, off the ice, whatever else they're doing, because they love hockey, and they love being a part of this team, and they love being part of this program. So I think for me, it's just knowing that I personally have an opportunity to make something out of nothing. I think it's what I was meant to do, honestly.  I can't imagine being anywhere else right now.

This conversation has been edited for clarity. Thanks to @umichwhockey 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.