BULLETIN: Feb. 20, 2023 — PSU rent exhibits the worth of an affiliate head coach

The announcement as we speak that Penn State affiliate subject hockey coach Lisa Bervinchak-Love could be taking up the place of head coach from legend Char Morett-Curtiss brings to thoughts a narrative I used to be engaged on a number of years in the past.

The story was to be about assistant coaches. However not simply any assistants, however coaches who labored for many years alongside their bosses, the profitable head coaches of their establishments.

Bervinchak-Love served as an assistant coach at Penn State for 29 seasons, which is on par with a number of the longer-servicing assistants that I’ve come throughout over time, akin to Diane Angstadt at Hummelstown Decrease Dauphin (Pa.), Holly Becker of The Lawrenceville (N.J.) Faculty, every of whom have served as assistant subject hockey coaches for greater than three many years.

The longevity of those three figures is in sharp contract to the lifetime of many assistants, most of whom are round for under a 12 months or two earlier than both transferring away from the game or discovering a head teaching place. Uncommon is the coach who’s stays an assistant in additional than a few totally different establishments.

I discover the hiring course of at Penn State in sharp distinction to what occurred final month on the College of North Carolina, which employed an all-time nice participant in Erin Matson to take over from Karen Shelton. The truth is, many subject hockey applications have now developed the place of “affiliate head coach” slightly than “assistant head coach,” which is a flowery manner of claiming, “you’re our new head coach as soon as the current-serving one steps down.”

Which is what occurred in Comfortable Valley.