Bowling Green State University Athletics
Heritage Series: Carl Bertrams
June 04, 2018 | General, Men's Soccer, Falcon Club
Throughout the months of April and May (and into early June), BGSUFalcons.com will be highlighting some of the men and women who have impacted the University, the community and the athletics department. From pioneers to more recent members of the campus community, Matt Markey will be providing the stories of our history. In our seventh and final installment, men's soccer player Carl Bertrams talks about his time at BGSU and the foundation it set for his career.
Â
PREVIOUS HERITAGE SERIES STORIES
Bob Dwors
Noel Jablonski
Judy Jeanette
Carol Durentini
Doug Cahill
Cathy Copeland-Mock
When high school soccer was just beginning to get a foothold in Ohio in the mid-1970s, Carl Bertrams was considering playing the sport on the college level. With just a club background, the native of the Dayton area came to Bowling Green State University, where a very strong soccer program and an equally acclaimed business school were well established.
"I knew I'd have to make the team as a walk-on, but that was okay with me because I really wanted to play soccer at BG," Bertrams said about the Falcons, who had qualified for the NCAA Tournament in both 1972 and 1973. "They had a good soccer program and a good business school, so it was the right place for me."
Bertrams graduated from Kettering Alter in 1974, but his high school didn't add soccer as a varsity sport until the following year. The bulk of the Bowling Green team at the time was made up of talented players from the East Coast, with most of them coming from schools where soccer had been established for decades.
"My freshman year, I think I was the only guy from Ohio on the team," said Bertrams, who had been a goalie throughout his club career, but ended up playing as a defender for the Falcons, under legendary head coach Mickey Cochrane. "Luckily, I was pretty fast so I guess that's where I could best help the team. And since I was a walk-on, I also think Mickey liked the fact he got a third goalie on the roster for free!"
Bertrams said the team was pushed very hard by Coach Cochrane, who started both the soccer and lacrosse programs at BG and is a member of the BGSU Athletics Hall of Fame. The University soccer field was dedicated in Cochrane's honor in 1980.
"I had a very good club coach in high school, and when I got to Bowling Green I got to play for Mickey. He worked us hard and there were a lot of days when we were sucking the wind coming off Poe Ditch, but we loved that guy to death and he was a great coach," Bertrams said. "I still remember all of us going to his house on Friday nights before games, and Mrs. Cochrane making brownies for the team."
Bertrams, who would earn an MBA before leaving Bowling Green and go on to an extremely successful career in the health care information technology profession, still ranks his days on campus and playing on the soccer team as some of the best he can recall.
"There were other guys who were the big dogs on the team, but that was fine with me," he said. "Being part of the soccer program at Bowling Green was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I was just so happy to be there, and to be on the team."
Bertrams, who was president of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity as an undergrad, served as the housefather for the Delts while doing his MBA work.
"Bowling Green was the perfect-sized school, because it felt like a big school, but it wasn't gigantic where you just get lost in the crowd," Bertrams said. "I felt like I was on my own, but being from Dayton, I was less than two hours from home, and my parents could come to our games. The campus was great and it was a very easy place to get around. I was there when they opened the student rec center, and I remember it was so cool, just beyond anything you could imagine at the time."
Bertrams, who majored in management and production operations, said Dr. Chan Hahn, the chair of the management department at the time, served as his mentor.
"Dr. Hahn had a great reputation in the field and he was always happy to connect you with somebody, make a reference for you, or help out in some way," Bertrams said. "All the professors and instructors were really approachable, and most of them had done consulting in the real world, so it didn't feel like they were just giving you the academic perspective."
His brothers John and Tom would follow Bertrams to BG, finding the school and the soccer program a very attractive combination. Carl chose to pursue his MBA with the intention of landing a job as a consultant.
"After receiving my bachelor's degree, I could have gone someplace and stayed with one company and worked my way up," Bertrams said, "but I really wanted to get into management consulting side and use all of the things we had learned in the different scenarios we covered in my classes."
With his MBA in hand, Bertrams was recruited by a consulting company in Chicago and first worked selling software to businesses that were just starting to computerize their operations. He has spent the last 30 years working in the I.T. realm of the health care world.
He has worked for a number of companies in the fast-paced, cutting edge field, and in 2007 Bertrams became one of the principal partners of a company called Patient Secure, which developed a technology that uses a biometric camera that reads the vein pattern in the palm of the patient and retrieves that patient's medical records. The company was acquired by Imprivata in 2015, and Bertrams continues to consult with them to this day. Most recently, he has taken a senior leadership role as Chief Revenue Officer with Collateral Opportunities, a software incubator that creates products for companies in the health care field.
"Most of my career I've been involved with integrating revenue cycle software with all of the big players in health care like Cerner, Epic, McKesson & 3M," he said. "If you do it right, then it's right no matter what field you are in."
He said the college soccer experience he had at BGSU has remained one of the foundational elements in his approach to business.
"Being part of a team is 100 percent of what I do now. When I'm interviewing people, they need to fit into a team framework, so I always look at the resume and if they did something on a team, or a club or whatever -- it doesn't have to be athletics – but it shows the work ethic and the drive to get out of bed and get going," he said. "You don't get to be part of a Division I team by luck – it comes from hard work, self-motivation, practicing in the dark, and so on. And people who have been part of a team make good management candidates because they know how to produce in a framework, where everyone plays their part."
Bertrams and his wife, the former Debi Groah, a 1978 BG graduate, have three adult daughters and five grandchildren, with a sixth on the way. Bertrams said he gets to a couple of Falcon soccer games each year, and is thrilled with the job BG men's coach Eric Nichols has done with the team, and connecting with former players.
"Eric has revolutionized the alumni side of the soccer team by reaching out to all of the alumni and getting us involved," Bertrams said. "We help raise money and try to help out with recruiting. I feel like it's come full circle and brought us back to be a part of the program. We love being around the guys and telling stories – and we hope the guys like hearing them."
Â
Â
PREVIOUS HERITAGE SERIES STORIES
Bob Dwors
Noel Jablonski
Judy Jeanette
Carol Durentini
Doug Cahill
Cathy Copeland-Mock
When high school soccer was just beginning to get a foothold in Ohio in the mid-1970s, Carl Bertrams was considering playing the sport on the college level. With just a club background, the native of the Dayton area came to Bowling Green State University, where a very strong soccer program and an equally acclaimed business school were well established."I knew I'd have to make the team as a walk-on, but that was okay with me because I really wanted to play soccer at BG," Bertrams said about the Falcons, who had qualified for the NCAA Tournament in both 1972 and 1973. "They had a good soccer program and a good business school, so it was the right place for me."
Bertrams graduated from Kettering Alter in 1974, but his high school didn't add soccer as a varsity sport until the following year. The bulk of the Bowling Green team at the time was made up of talented players from the East Coast, with most of them coming from schools where soccer had been established for decades.
"My freshman year, I think I was the only guy from Ohio on the team," said Bertrams, who had been a goalie throughout his club career, but ended up playing as a defender for the Falcons, under legendary head coach Mickey Cochrane. "Luckily, I was pretty fast so I guess that's where I could best help the team. And since I was a walk-on, I also think Mickey liked the fact he got a third goalie on the roster for free!"
Bertrams said the team was pushed very hard by Coach Cochrane, who started both the soccer and lacrosse programs at BG and is a member of the BGSU Athletics Hall of Fame. The University soccer field was dedicated in Cochrane's honor in 1980.
"I had a very good club coach in high school, and when I got to Bowling Green I got to play for Mickey. He worked us hard and there were a lot of days when we were sucking the wind coming off Poe Ditch, but we loved that guy to death and he was a great coach," Bertrams said. "I still remember all of us going to his house on Friday nights before games, and Mrs. Cochrane making brownies for the team."
Bertrams, who would earn an MBA before leaving Bowling Green and go on to an extremely successful career in the health care information technology profession, still ranks his days on campus and playing on the soccer team as some of the best he can recall.
"There were other guys who were the big dogs on the team, but that was fine with me," he said. "Being part of the soccer program at Bowling Green was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I was just so happy to be there, and to be on the team."
Bertrams, who was president of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity as an undergrad, served as the housefather for the Delts while doing his MBA work.
"Bowling Green was the perfect-sized school, because it felt like a big school, but it wasn't gigantic where you just get lost in the crowd," Bertrams said. "I felt like I was on my own, but being from Dayton, I was less than two hours from home, and my parents could come to our games. The campus was great and it was a very easy place to get around. I was there when they opened the student rec center, and I remember it was so cool, just beyond anything you could imagine at the time."
Bertrams, who majored in management and production operations, said Dr. Chan Hahn, the chair of the management department at the time, served as his mentor.
"Dr. Hahn had a great reputation in the field and he was always happy to connect you with somebody, make a reference for you, or help out in some way," Bertrams said. "All the professors and instructors were really approachable, and most of them had done consulting in the real world, so it didn't feel like they were just giving you the academic perspective."
His brothers John and Tom would follow Bertrams to BG, finding the school and the soccer program a very attractive combination. Carl chose to pursue his MBA with the intention of landing a job as a consultant.
"After receiving my bachelor's degree, I could have gone someplace and stayed with one company and worked my way up," Bertrams said, "but I really wanted to get into management consulting side and use all of the things we had learned in the different scenarios we covered in my classes."
With his MBA in hand, Bertrams was recruited by a consulting company in Chicago and first worked selling software to businesses that were just starting to computerize their operations. He has spent the last 30 years working in the I.T. realm of the health care world.
He has worked for a number of companies in the fast-paced, cutting edge field, and in 2007 Bertrams became one of the principal partners of a company called Patient Secure, which developed a technology that uses a biometric camera that reads the vein pattern in the palm of the patient and retrieves that patient's medical records. The company was acquired by Imprivata in 2015, and Bertrams continues to consult with them to this day. Most recently, he has taken a senior leadership role as Chief Revenue Officer with Collateral Opportunities, a software incubator that creates products for companies in the health care field.
"Most of my career I've been involved with integrating revenue cycle software with all of the big players in health care like Cerner, Epic, McKesson & 3M," he said. "If you do it right, then it's right no matter what field you are in."
He said the college soccer experience he had at BGSU has remained one of the foundational elements in his approach to business.
"Being part of a team is 100 percent of what I do now. When I'm interviewing people, they need to fit into a team framework, so I always look at the resume and if they did something on a team, or a club or whatever -- it doesn't have to be athletics – but it shows the work ethic and the drive to get out of bed and get going," he said. "You don't get to be part of a Division I team by luck – it comes from hard work, self-motivation, practicing in the dark, and so on. And people who have been part of a team make good management candidates because they know how to produce in a framework, where everyone plays their part."
Bertrams and his wife, the former Debi Groah, a 1978 BG graduate, have three adult daughters and five grandchildren, with a sixth on the way. Bertrams said he gets to a couple of Falcon soccer games each year, and is thrilled with the job BG men's coach Eric Nichols has done with the team, and connecting with former players.
"Eric has revolutionized the alumni side of the soccer team by reaching out to all of the alumni and getting us involved," Bertrams said. "We help raise money and try to help out with recruiting. I feel like it's come full circle and brought us back to be a part of the program. We love being around the guys and telling stories – and we hope the guys like hearing them."
Â
"Outside The Chalk" -- Hannah Simko (April 14, 2026)
Tuesday, April 14
BGSU Baseball Tops Central Michigan In Series Opener | April 10, 2026
Monday, April 13
Party at the Dolores Black Invitational #Shorts
Monday, April 13
BG WGolf Posttournament Interviews
Sunday, April 12