photo by Nick Gerhardt

Mike Gordon recently retired as the head coach of the girls’ U-12B team after 11 years. He was the team’s first head coach when it started play in 1998.

Albert Lea’s first girls’ U-12 coach retires

By Nick Gerhardt | Albert Lea Tribune

Published Thursday, March 26, 2009

For the past 11 years the Albert Lea girls’ youth hockey team has known just one head coach.

Mike Gordon has coached the girls’ U-12 B team since its beginning in 1998, but recently retired from coaching. Ed Pomerson and Gordon’s son, Zach, will continue to coach the team.

Gordon helped usher in the start of girls’ youth hockey in Albert Lea in 1998 and became the girls’ coordinator for the Albert Lea Hockey Association.

In the past 11 years Gordon has helped take the U-12 B team to six district championships, three regional championships and one trip to state, each year with a group of skaters of varying age.

“I’ll take any girl that comes out,” Gordon said. “I don’t care if they’re 5, or 6, or 7. This year, we had a 29-9-1 record and over half the team was U-10 age.”

This past season the team claimed the District championship and advanced to regionals.

The U-12 B team is the only team for girls’ in Albert Lea mainly because of the numbers, until the girls reach junior high when they can begin playing for the high school team.

The first season Gordon coached the team finished 19-5-2 at a time when girls’ hockey was just starting to become more popular.

“This whole concept of girls’ hockey was fairly new,” Gordon said. “It was tough because we didn’t have the skill level. I was, and so was the coaches that I had, were on a learning curve trying to figure out what we could teach these kids and come up with some sort of a program that will work for what we’re trying to do.”

Since the team accepts any girl 12 years old and younger, Gordon often had girls that could barely skate to girls that were very skilled. He found getting into a routine that stressed the fundamentals of skating worked well.

“One of the things that I’ve found that has worked really well for the team is that the first 15 minutes of every practice is strictly skating skills,” Gordon said. “That has helped immensely because that gets the little girls forcing them to try and skate and do everything that the bigger girls can do.”

Gordon got started coaching the girls’ team when he saw an ad in the paper that someone wanted to start a girls’ hockey team. Having coached boys in the past, Gordon answered the call to help coach the newly formed girls’ team.

“It was the year after the high school started its program,” Gordon said. “There wasn’t a feeder program. I just basically talked with the person and we took off with it.”

Gordon credited his coaching staff, players, and parents for much of the success the team has had during the past 11 years.

“We’ve had a tremendous 11 years,” Gordon said. “I don’t attribute that to me. I still believe it’s a combination of the coaches that I’ve had with me, the kids, the parents, everything in general adds to a winning program.”

Gordon says he’ll miss being the coach, but he’s gotten a lot of rewards from coaching.

“I guarantee I got more out of this than anybody else because you see somebody happy, they’re having a good time, you know you’ve helped that,” Gordon said. “That means a lot.”

Gordon will still be around plenty at the arena, though. He works at the arena and has asked that the team leave his name on as a coach just in case he gets the itch to come back on the ice to help with the team.

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