| CCHA Coach of the Year | |
|---|---|
| Sport | Ice hockey |
| Given for | The Coach of the Year in the CCHA |
| History | |
| First award | 1976 |
| Final award | 2013 |
| Most recent | Enrico Blasi |
The CCHA Coach of the Year was an annual award given out at the conclusion of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association regular season to the best coach in the conference as voted by the coaches of each CCHA team. [1]
The Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) was a college athletic conference that participated in the NCAA's Division I as a hockey-only conference. The majority of its members were located in the states of Michigan and Ohio, although it also had teams located in Alaska, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Nebraska over the course of its existence.
Contents
- Award winners
- Winners by school
- Multiple Winners
- See also
- References
- General
- Specific
- External links
The longest continually conferred award in history of the CCHA, the 'Coach of the Year' was first awarded in 1976 and every year thereafter until 2013 when the CCHA was dissolved as a consequence of the Big Ten forming its men's ice hockey conference. [2]
Ice hockey is a contact team sport played on ice, usually in a rink, in which two teams of skaters use their sticks to shoot a vulcanized rubber puck into their opponent's net to score points. The sport is known to be fast-paced and physical, with teams usually consisting of six players each: one goaltender, and five players who skate up and down the ice trying to take the puck and score a goal against the opposing team.
An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams, playing competitively against each other at the professional, collegiate, or high school level. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels. Conferences often, but not always, include teams from a common geographic region.
Ron Mason and Jeff Jackson are the only coaches to win the award with multiple teams.
Ronald Herbert Mason was a Canadian ice hockey player, head coach, and university executive. A head coach of various American universities, most notably Michigan State University (MSU), he was the most successful coach in NCAA ice hockey history between 1993-2012 with 924 wins, until Jerry York become the new winningest coach with his 925th career win on December 29, 2012. Mason was athletic director at MSU from 2002-08. He then served as senior advisor for the USHL Muskegon Lumberjacks. On December 2, 2013, Mason was inducted into the U.S Hockey Hall of Fame.