Bowling Green State University Athletics
Falcons Ready To Build New Tradition
October 11, 2012 | Ice Hockey
Coach Bergeron's Interview
What was the biggest thing you learned as a coach last season?
Chris Bergeron (CB): From a personal perspective I learned that I have to be way more consistent with my daily approach. I feel like I was way too high when things were okay, and way too low when things weren't. I'm not sure if everyone saw that and felt that, but behind the scenes I was way too inconsistent with my daily approach. I believe whole-heartedly that in the short, small picture, the day-to-day approach. The let's focus on today, let's not worry about tomorrow, let's forget about yesterday. I got way too caught up in that last year, especially in the first half of the year. As the season went on I talked to my family and my friends, in particular my two assistant coaches, Barry (Schutte) and Ty (Eigner), we all got through it together. I really feel like I'm going to challenge myself to make sure that doesn't happen this year because there are expectations this year. And if those expectations aren't met, especially early, that doesn't mean the plan isn't working and I can't feel sorry for myself. I need to be way more consistent in my approach.
Briefly talk about the new guys; do they fit that mold that has been set here in the past two recruiting classes?
CB: They physically fit the mold. You'll see more size, better skaters, and more offense. Are they going to be willing, on a daily basis, to come out of their comfort zone and take their game or academics to a whole new level, that's something that's a work in progress. There's no reason to believe that they wont. They fit our recruiting model. They are the type of kids that we want around us for four years. They're starting to get pushed to where they're going to have to be willing to do things at a higher level, and we're seeing good things at this point. But it's very early, so collectively it's a good group with a lot of potential to make an impact on this program over their time here. Now when we have some time under our belt and see them on a daily basis, we'll be able to say how big their impact is going to be. We hope, we think, their impact is going to be good, really, really good, or even great because that's the type of kids they are. There's no reason to believe that they can't be better than they even think they can be based on our culture and our brand, and based on them willing to push themselves harder than they've ever pushed themselves before. We feel really good about this group. But we also feel good about the older guys, and that they're learning from a lot more established, into the brand, into the culture group. So it makes it a little easier on them than some of the other first year groups that we've had come through here.
What's your biggest concern heading into this season?
CB: Our biggest concern, my biggest concern, is we lose track of the process, and we lose our focus on a daily basis based on results. I know there's progress being made with this program; we know there's progress being made. The reality is however, everybody judges us on wins and losses. Especially with how we finished last year, everyone's going to expect us to win at the same level that we were at the end of last season, and that's what we expect. But if it doesn't happen, that doesn't mean things aren't progressing, and things aren't going the way we expect them to go. The winning and losing is going to take care of itself as our brand, as our culture continues to establish itself more. That's our biggest concern, is that going to happen? I don't know. Why would that happen? I don't really know. We still are a young group when it comes to this culture and this brand, but I'd have to say that's our biggest concern. Losing track of the big picture. There's no reason to lose track of what we're doing here based on winning and losing necessarily, and that's what we're going to have to fight ourselves on.
What's do you feel is the team's biggest strength?
CB: Well I think this team potentially could score more goals than we have in the past, and that's not a great comparison because we haven't scored goals at a very good level the last two years we've been here. But I think this team has potential to do that, I think there's more than one or two guys to look at to contribute offensively, and you know we expect more defensemen to get involved from that aspect of our game. I feel like other than that it's the same, they feel really good about themselves, we're a really close bunch, I really like that about our group, we are acting like a family. But to this point there has been no adversity, and we all know that some colors come out through adversity. We are trying to train ourselves mentally to handle adversity in a certain way. We'll see how that goes once we start playing games here and it's for real, but I like the fact that our team is starting to take the shape of the team we're trying to put together, we want to be a team that competes really hard and has a work ethic, which is what we have. We've done that for the past couple of years, we also want to be a team that has lots of size, and we believe we have that. We want to be a team that can get up and down the ice and skate, and we think we can do that. Ultimately, we want to be a team that can defend, and I think we've established being able to defend okay the last couple years, now we want to make that defending better, but I just think this is starting to resemble more of a type of team we're trying to put together here.
You named Cam Wojtala and Ryan Carpenter co-captains this year. Why those two, and what do they bring to the table?
This season will be a success if______
CB: I feel that this season will be a success if we continue to make strides when it comes to our culture, and the brand we are trying to create at Bowling Green, which is the willingness to be great on a daily basis. A bunch of kids that believe in that, that live that, it's a hard thing to measure here, but we're going to know if that's what we have our not, and this season will be a success because of that. That's a coach's answer, everybody thinks it will be a success if we win a certain number of games, well I'm not going to do that. It'll be a success anyway based on if we can continue to build this culture up, and this brand up where it can be sustained over the next 20, 25, 30, whatever it may be years. For anybody that comes through this program, they're going to know what it means to be apart of the Bowling Green hockey family. So that's not a great way to fill in the blank, but that's the best way I can put it. It'll be a success if we can continue to build our brand to where we feel it needs to be.
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